Russia and Turkey impose bans on Discord

Both Turkey and Russia have imposed restrictions on using the popular communication platform, Discord, which is often used by gamers.

As per a report from Reuters, Turkey took this action after Discord chose not to provide certain data requested by the Turkish government. Authorities in Turkey claimed that issues related to "child sexual abuse and obscenity" necessitated access to this data.

Abdulkadir Uraloglu, the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, stated, "Security personnel cannot go through the content. We can only intervene when users complain to us about content shared there."

Uraloglu further added, "Since Discord refuses to share its own information, including IP addresses and content, with our security units, we were forced to block access."

In a similar move earlier this week, Russian authorities completely restricted access to the application. This followed the imposition of fines against the San Francisco-based company for allegedly breaching Russian laws.

The Russian government claimed Discord did not remove about 1000 items which they consider illegal, thus prompting the blockage. Other platforms like Facebook and X/Twitter are also already prohibited in Russia.

The decision has caused significant challenges for developers operating within these countries.

"Now Discord is also banned in Turkey, communications between our Finland - Turkey studios are now dead unless we use VPN in [our] Turkey office, which is considered illegal," commented Meric Eryuyek from Gaming Istanbul through LinkedIn.

Eryuyek added, "I'm assuming this mindless, clueless, arbitrary ban affected around 800 Turkish studios & their creative work. For some studios, nothing can do what Discord does. What a dumb, ignorant, destructive move."

In response to these developments, a spokesperson from Discord informed Reuters, "We are aware of reports of Discord being unreachable in Russia and Turkey," and mentioned that their team is currently looking into these issues.