On Friday, the Turkish government began using throttling, a method that renders websites unusable by slowing them down, to block major social media apps including Twitter, WhatsApp, Youtube, and Facebook. The Turkish government has a history of suppressing internet freedoms and the circulation of information. Earlier this week, the government blocked internet for users in the southeast part of Turkey. In April 2015, the government lifted a ban on Twitter, originally due to a photo of a Turkish prosecutor held at gunpoint by far-left militants being circulated on the site, only when Twitter agreed to remove all offending images and shut down accounts. These actions are not unheard of, as various countries around the world have banned social media apps. For example, Brazil once suspended WhatsApp when the company did not turn in a user’s encrypted data. [More from Social Barrel]