Turkey Tries to Ban YouTube After Twitter (Learn How to Bypass the Ban)
Just one day after a court in Ankara ordered the lifting of a Twitter ban imposed by the country's telecommunications authority, the Turkish government is once again trying to keep its citizens from accessing parts of the world wide web. This time Prime Minister Erdogan is trying to keep everyone in Turkey from ever visting YouTube after videos surfaced exposing leaked audio from senstive intelligence meetings.
Mr.Erdogan has publicly criticized social media sites for facilitating the spread of misinformation and refusing to censor user uploaded content. With pivotal local elections right around the corner, Erdogan and his party are doing their best to maintain a good reputation, and they've even suggested that Facebook could be the next site to be banned.
Fortunately for Turkish youtube users, there are plenty of tips and tricks that will let you bypass the so-called ban without even having to leave the country. Below we've listed all of the best ways to acces YouTube even when your internet provider is trying to stop you:
Web Proxies
Visiting YouTube through a web proxy is perhaps the easiest and fastest solution to bypass the ban. However, not all web proxies work and browsing speeds can sometimes seem unbearable, especially when you're in a hurry to load a video.
Using a web proxy is almost self-explanatory; simply visit the proxy site, find the URL field, and type in YouTube.com or the exact addrrss of the video you're trying to load. If you need a list of web proxies to try out just run a Google search for "best web proxies."
TOR Network
The TOR network is a virtual private network (VPN) service/software that is commonly used to browse the internet anonymously and avoid censorship bans. Although using the TOR network is a bit more complicated to use than a web proxy, it is considered more secure and once you learn how to connect to TOR the process is much less bothersome than trying to find a working web proxy that isn't being bogged down by excessive traffic.
Evading DNS Lookups for Youtube
This is probably the most convenient solution because it only requires a one-time action and then you can start using Youtube with your regular browser and without using any proxies or VPNs. Consider the following instructions to learn how to bypass the ban manually:
1. First you'll need to edit your hosts file to point to 208.65.153.251. Click here to learn how to edit your host file. Once you've read that guide and you know how to edit your hosts file you can add the following text to it to prevent YouTube from being blocked on your device:
'echo
208.65.153.251 www.youtube.com >>
c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts'
Keep in mind you should use a text editor like notepad to ensure that the above lines are typed in correctly. Also, there might not be a line break already present in the host file, so to add one you would simply open the file, find the "208.", and place the cursor befor the "208." and then press enter. Remember to save the hosts file before you close it.
