How to overcome your nation’s Twitter block using a few simple steps

As a social media outlet, Twitter a is vehicle especially noted for its ability to enact social change, rapidly growing a vast momentum around shared public opinion. It’s no wonder that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan fears it in his hour of dwindling political influence and public disapproval. As a result, the prime minister banned Twitter following a speech made earlier in March. The irony, or hilarity I should say, is that the ban is so haphazard, that users can easily overcome Twitter’s regional lock using any of the few simple techniques outlined in this article.

 
Mike Tigas, developer at ProPublica, jokingly tells NPR, “the way that it appears that Turkey has blocked Twitter can be defeated just by simply changing a couple of settings on your computer.” It’s unclear whether the nation was aware of this fact from the get-go and was unable to take more radical measures, or sought to inconvenience its residents.

To understand the simplicity of the primary solution and why the entire situation is so absurd in the first place, I’ll draw a little analogy outlining how DNS servers, IP addresses, and the Internet fit together: The Internet exists through a series of interconnected servers, joined in a vast network of cables. Yes, as a matter of fact, we still use cables, underwater cables that travel beneath oceans connecting nations, continents apart.

Servers are reached using a four-part number called the IP address, that links with your Internet service provider’s servers once you’ve typed Twitter.com into a browser, which in turn uses the DNS (domain name system) to look Twitter’s servers’ IP address, and directs you to Twitter’s webpage.

Method 1
As NPR’s Emily Siner gracefully puts it, the Internet service provider works as an operator who connects your phone number (your IP address) to Twitter’s phone number(their IP address) by looking up their number in a phonebook (DNS). To bypass Turkey’s Twitter region-lock, residents need only change their network settings to access Google’s Public DNS server instead of the DNS server of Turkish Internet providers. Google offers a comprehensible step by step tutorial that any English-literate person can follow. That’s it.

Method 2
If the instructions above are too advanced for you, or you don’t want to bother tampering with DNS, Twitter suggests sending tweets via SMS.

Method 3
A third trick is to use a VPN service to access web. VPN’s are user-friendly; they are easy to set up and provide access to most region-locked webpages such as Hulu, ABC, NBC, or BBC’s iPlayer. The only downside is a subscription fee.

Method 4
For those looking to avoid subscription fees and additional software all together, web proxy tools may do the trick. Proxies reroute your IP to 3rd party servers, granting you a new IP from another location. A few proxies such as Hide My Ass and Proxify exist as webpages accessed directly through a browser. Since this approach literally sends everything you do through someone else’s computer, its consider insecure for typing passwords or doing online banking, and should only be reserved for Tweeting or watching online video content.

Method 4.5
A more secure proxy-related approach is to establish your own proxy using Firefox’s FoxyProxy plugin or Chrome’s Proxy Switchy. This method is more technical and requires that you obtain a proxy IP address and port from the country you’re trying to access. For example, native-Chinese users unable to watch YouTube videos would select a US-based proxy. International proxy IP addresses can googled.

Via NPR and Digitaltrends