ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – Turkey on Tuesday slapped advertising bans on Twitter, Periscope and Pinterest for their non-compliance with a controversial new law requiring social media platforms to appoint legal representatives in the country.
The law – which according to human rights and media freedom groups amounts to censorship – forces social media companies with more than a million users to retain representatives in Turkey to handle complaints about content on their platforms.
Businesses that refuse to appoint an official representative will be subject to fines, followed by advertising bans, and may face bandwidth cuts that would make their platform use too slow. The ban is on selling online ad space, which is what many social media companies make their money from.
Facebook bypassed the advertising ban after it announced on Monday that it had begun assigning a legal entity in Turkey, by joining LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Dailymotion and the Russian social media site VKontakte, which have agreed to set up legal entities in Turkey.
“We hope that Twitter and Pinterest, which have still not announced their representatives, will take the necessary action quickly,” said Omer Fatih Sayan, the deputy minister responsible for communications and infrastructure, following Twitter’s advertising ban, the app for live video streaming. , Periscope, and the image-sharing network Pinterest were announced in the Turkish Official Gazette.
Sayan added, “Our last wish is to impose bandwidth throttling on social networks that insist on not meeting their commitments.”
Twitter said in an email to The Associated Press that it had no comment on Turkey’s move. There was no immediate response from Pinterest.
Under the law that went into effect in October, the local representative of social media companies would be tasked with responding within 48 hours to individual requests to remove content that violates privacy and personal rights or provide grounds for rejection. The company will be held liable for damage if the content is not removed or blocked within 24 hours.
The law also requires social media data to be stored in Turkey, which is a cause of concern in a country where the government has restricted freedom of expression.
The government emphasizes that the legislation is necessary to combat cybercrime and to protect the rights of Turkish social media users.
Rights groups have said that the decision of international tech companies to deflect Turkish pressure and appoint representatives would lead to censorship and violations of the right to privacy and access to information in a country where independent media is severely restricted. The Freedom of Speech Association says that more than 450,000 domains and 42,000 tweets have been blocked in Turkey since October.
Facebook said Monday it remains committed to preserving free speech and other human rights in Turkey.
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Associated Press writer Kelvin Chan in London contributed.