On Twitter Censorship In Turkey, Elon Musk Gets A Sharp Response From Wikipedia Founder

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales took a dig at Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Saturday for censoring critics of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, a day before the country's highly contested presidential election.

In a Twitter post, Mr Wales called out Musk for not supporting free speech when he caved to Turkey's demands to restrict content. In his post, Mr Wales mentioned that when he faced a similar situation, Wikipedia pushed back.

In response to Musk's tweet, "What Wikipedia did: we stood strong for our principles and fought to the Supreme Court of Turkey and won. This is what it means to treat freedom of expression as a principle rather than a slogan."

What Wikipedia did: we stood strong for our principles and fought to the Supreme Court of Turkey and won. This is what it means to treat freedom of expression as a principle rather than a slogan. https://t.co/tHkx1Wa06r

— Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) May 13, 2023

Notably, Mr Wales was not the only one who clapped back at Musk for giving into a Turkish court's demand.

In a post, Musk defended himself while tweeting to Matthew Yglesias who had criticized him:

"Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?"

Mr Wales made the tweet post Musk's tweet and cited his website's story as an example.

Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey for more than two years when the telecommunications watchdog cited a law allowing it to ban access to sites deemed obscene or a threat to national security.