Turkey has blocked online game Roblox, which is popular among teenagers, a week after the country blocked access to Instagram following accusations of censorship against the tech giant.
The move on Wednesday (Aug. 7) night came amid growing criticism of social media by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has accused online platforms of “fascism” and failing to remove posts deemed offensive by authorities.
Roblox, a platform that lets players create their own games, has been downloaded more than 41 million times in Turkey since its launch in 2015.
Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said Roblox had been suspended because it “contains content that could lead to child abuse.” Prosecutors in Adana are investigating Roblox.
Instagram access has been blocked in Türkiye since Friday (2/8).
The platform, owned by the US company, responded to the government's allegations by saying it had removed more than 2,500 posts at its request in the first six months of this year.
Erdogan said on Monday (Aug. 5) that social networking platforms “cannot even tolerate photos of Palestinian martyrs without immediately banning them,” adding that Instagram had banned posts of condolences over the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Turkey may continue its crackdown on social media as the head of parliament's digital platforms commission, Huseyin Yayman, said there were calls to block TikTok.
“People who meet me on the street stop me and say: 'You will go to heaven if you close TikTok,'” Yayman told the news agency DHA.
Istanbul Mayor and opposition politician Ekrem Imamoglu slammed the government's move, calling it “absurd”.
“Those who made this decision have no idea about the new world, economy and technology,” Imamoglu wrote on the social media platform X. (es/ft)
