By Enes Bayraklı
Instagram was banned in Türkiye for censoring news about Ismail Heniyye.
The more royalist than royalist detached intellectuals in our country immediately launched many arguments, such as freedom of expression and freedom of communication being restricted.
Of course, a little reflection reveals that all these objections are completely empty.
In this age of communication, it is a ludicrous claim that a ban on access to a social media company because of its ideological censorship is preventing freedom of communication and freedom of expression.
There are thousands of channels for people to express their opinions.
The reason for the access ban on Instagram is the censorship of freedom of expression by Instagram itself, which is an apparatus of the digital dictatorship established by big technology companies.
If those who oppose this access ban in the name of freedom of expression and freedom of communication are really sincere, they should first come up with what to do against this censorship imposed by Instagram.
What needs to be done is simple. Instagram, Facebook or Twitter will respect the laws of the countries in which they are located, pay their taxes and stop practicing censorship that aims to impose their ideological assumptions on these societies.
If they do not do these things, they will be shut down; at the same time, their local and national alternatives will be developed.
Today, social media companies, with their so-called free services, are a threat to democracy, freedom of expression and nation states.
These companies use the ‘big data’ they collect from their users without their permission to manipulate it in line with the interests of the Western states and companies where they are based.
At election times, algorithms are activated to interfere with the results, increasing the visibility of fake news and disinformation.
Accepting the fact that these companies comply with all kinds of legal regulations in the United States and Europe, but act as they wish in Turkey without regard to any legal regulations, would reduce our country to the status of a client state.
The main reason why Western states banned TikTok is because the app is an apparatus of the Chinese state.
Instagram today is also an apparatus of the American state.
Since Westerners see themselves as the masters of the world, they say, “We can ban TikTok, but you cannot ban Instagram.”
And the intellectuals of the colonies in our midst are trumpeting this outdated and outdated discourse.
All this may not pose a problem for the intellectuals of the subcontinent, but it is unthinkable for any citizen who respects himself, his state, his nation and his independence to accept such a double standard.
Source: dirilispostasi.com
