Twitter has confirmed that it censored content in Turkey ahead of the country’s presidential election.
The verified Twitter Global Government Affairs account said, “In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.”
The account said that the rest of the world would be able to view the content, and that account holders had been informed about this.
When journalist Matthew Yglesias claimed on Saturday that Elon Musk had complied with the Turkey government’s request to censor its opponents before an election, the Twitter owner defended the move in strong terms.
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“Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?” tweeted Musk in response on Saturday.
Neither the current President Tayyip Erdogan nor his opposition Kemal Kilicdaroglu secured more than 50% of the votes, meaning that a second election round will take place later in the month.
Musk earlier announced that he would be stepping down as Twitter CEO. He named Linda Yaccarino, the former head of advertising at NBCUniversal, as his successor.
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