Why do governments keep banning social media when it never works out for them?

[Commentary] You'd think world leaders would know better. Shut down the Internet (or some services that it hosts), and the users will come after you.

But, faced with allegations of corruption, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan went ahead and banned Twitter anyway. Now Turks are pushing back. Twitter is facilitating the uproar by offering advice on how to evade the ban with text messaging. Other users have turned to virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent the blockage.

How do these leaders keep making the same mistakes? Don't they learn?

It shouldn't surprise us that these leaders have more in common than just an affinity for dropping the hammer on the Web. Many are also isolated, says Steven Cook, a Middle East scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations who met with Erdogan.

If the Internet creates filter bubbles that keep us from having to grapple with dissonant views, the filter that afflicts censor-happy regimes like Turkey's is arguably even worse. If Erdogan is convinced that he's the victim, and sees enemies everywhere, shutting down their ability to associate might seem like a perfectly rational move -- at least in the moment. It's an age-old move out of the dictators' playbook: Control the flow of information, and you control the people.