How can we solve it without banning?

As you all know, when there is an “undesired” type of story that spreads on Twitter, an immediate block is imposed on the website. We have not gotten used to bans but we are not as astonished as we used to be.

Facebook can also be banned over the same “sensitivity.” A piece written, a slight implication inside any story can turn into topics that turn many people’s lives into hell. Then a ban comes again. As a matter of fact, everybody has a natural filter in their minds. 

Then it was the booking.com issue that kept everybody busy for a long time. The debate has cooled now, but many believe that booking.com creates unfair competition. 

It is true that there is much manipulation and unfair commercial connections on the internet. Since all of them cannot be banned, the path to fight them cannot be through banning or blocking.  

The Wikipedia incident is another matter…

Truth, all through history, has been a matter that changes depending on “which side you are looking from and who is looking” while also depending on time and conjuncture. There was no technology in the past that enabled any questioning of this. 

The quotations of important people were not questioned in encyclopedias. If the information was “printed once,” it was regarded as correct, true and worth sharing. They were written by professionals, not by anybody else. 

This situation has changed with the internet. “The man on the street” became the source of information. The reader, who was inclined to directly believe the source available, fell into the trap easily. Thus this trend became one of the reasons why fake stories circulated easily. 

As the internet grew and as sites grew when users added their own knowledge to them, sources of information became non-professional people, meaning the margin of error widened. 

Everybody’s thoughts, the filter through with they see the world, their subjective perception of life and the feeling of “If I think so, then it is correct” all replaced true knowledge. 


The era of ‘me’ and its dangers

The era of “me,” in other words, “I and my extremely important thoughts on certain subjects” is one of the main issues that have increased the margin of error of the information on the internet. The other one is the almost total elimination of popularity by natural means. Followers can be bought, and commercial interests can change informative presentations.  

Because there is intense manipulation on social media sites that are open to everybody, even conducting a survey among users does not provide true statistics.  

Fighting the misleading features of social media through bans and blocks makes individuals, institutions and states “look bad” even though their starting point may not be so bad. 

As a matter of fact, there is always a way to bypass all bans. There is not one soul on the earth, I believe, who uses the internet and cannot find a way to enter a banned site.  

When the situation is like this, it is not possible to fight with bans against the drawbacks of the uncontrollably growing technology. 

Both the new generation and new technology drive us toward thinking differently. But there is one thing that does not change in this world: Bans do not solve anything in any matter.

If bans are not a shortcut or solution and do not prevent users from entering banned sites, then what is this insistence? 

While technology is shouting with all its might “There will always be problems; there will be new problems but bans are not a remedy or a solution; solve it in a different way,” then what is the reason for this persistence?