Turkey's Attempt To Block Twitter Is Failing Spectacularly

It turns out that in 2014, blocking access to part of the internet isn't very easy.

Yesterday, Turkey tried blocking Twitter ahead of elections. But people have been finding ways around the block.

From the Hurriyet Daily News:

The number of messages tweeted by users in Turkey has not dropped since access to Twitter was banned, statistics have shown. What's more, the hashtags #TwitterisblockedinTurkey and #TurkeyBlockedTwitter became trending topics worldwide only a few hours after Prime MinisterRecep Tayyip Erdogan announced his intention to "wipe out" the microblogging website.

According a report from Twitturk, which records the statistics of Turkish Twitter users, over half a million tweets were posted in just 10 hours, despite the ban.

That number would mark no sharp fall from the average number of tweets posted in the country, which is around 1.8 million per day.

People are getting on Twitter by using an alternate DNS service, the number of which is being posted everywhere, both in public and on other social media.

These two images from Instagram show how the Twitter workarounds are being spread.