Turkey and Russia ban Discord

Turkey and Russia have banned access to the gaming-adjacent messaging platform, Discord.

According to Reuters, Turkey reportedly blocked Discord after it refused to share information demanded by Turkish authorities which alleged crimes of “child sexual abuse and obscenity” were committed on the platform.

“Security personnel cannot go through the content. We can only intervene when users complain to us about content shared there,” Transport and infrastructure minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said.

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

Similarly, Russian authorities have also implemented a blanket ban of the software this week after issuing fines to the San Francisco-based company for purportedly violating Russian law.

Alleging that Discord failed to remove 1000 items deemed illegal and banned in Russia, the government intervened and has now blocked access entirely. Facebook and X/Twitter are also banned in the country.

The ban has had an immediate impact upon developers working in the affected regions.

“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,” said Gaming Istabul’s Meric Eryuyek.

“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.”

“We are aware of reports of Discord being unreachable in Russia and Turkey,” a Discord spokesperson told Reuters. “Our team is investigating these reports at this time.”