Children playground miniatures are seen in front of displayed Discord logo in this illustration taken April 4, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Turkey has blocked access to instant messaging platform Discord in line with a court decision after the platform refused to share information demanded by Ankara, Turkish authorities said on Wednesday.
"We are aware of reports of Discord being unreachable in Russia and Turkey. Our team is investigating these reports at this time," the San Francisco-based company said in a status update.
Turkey's Information Technologies and Communication Authority published the access ban decision on its website.
Justice minister Yilmaz Tunc said an Ankara court decided to block access to Discord from Turkey due to sufficient suspicion that crimes of "child sexual abuse and obscenity" had been committed by some using the platform.
The block comes after public outrage in Turkey caused by the murder of two women by a 19-year-old man in Istanbul this month. Content on social media showed Discord users subsequently praising the killing.
Transport and infrastructure minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said the nature of the Discord platform made it difficult for authorities to monitor and intervene when illegal or criminal content is shared.
"Security personnel cannot go through the content. We can only intervene when users complain to us about content shared there," he told reporters in parliament.
"Since Discord refuses to share its own information, including IP addresses and content, with our security units, we were forced to block access."
On Tuesday, Russia's communications regulator blocked Discord for violating Russian law, after previously fining the company for failing to remove banned content, the TASS news agency reported.
(Reporting by Ezgi Erkoyun and Nevzat DevranogluAdditional reporting by Miraç Eren DereliEditing by Lincoln Feast and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
