ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – Turkey on Tuesday rejected the ban on advertising on Twitter, Periscope and Pinterest due to failure to comply with a controversial new law requiring social media platforms to nominate legal representatives in the country.
The law – which human rights and media freedom groups say is tantamount to censorship – obliges social media companies with more than a million users to maintain representatives in Turkey to handle complaints about content on their platforms.
Companies that refuse to designate an official representative are subject to fines, followed by advertising bans and may face bandwidth reductions that would make their platforms too slow to use. The ban is the sale of online ad space, which is the means by which many social media companies make money.
Facebook avoided the advertising ban after announcing on Monday that it had started the process of assigning a legal entity in Turkey by joining LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Dailymotion and the Russian social media site VKontakte, which agreed in creating legal entities in Turkey.
“We hope that Twitter and Pinterest, which have not yet announced their representatives, will quickly take the necessary steps,” said Omer Fatih Sayan, the deputy minister in charge of communications and infrastructure, after banning advertising on Twitter, his streaming application. live video, Periscope and the image sharing network, Pinterest, were announced in the Official Gazette of Turkey.
Sayan added: “It is our last wish to impose bandwidth reductions on social networks that insist on not meeting their obligations.”
Twitter said in an email to the Associated Press that it had no comment on Turkey’s action. There was no immediate response from Pinterest.
According to the law that came into force in October, the local representative of social media companies would be tasked with responding to individual requests to remove content that violated privacy and personal rights within 48 hours or provide reasons for rejection. The company will be liable for damages if the content is not removed or blocked within 24 hours.
The law also requires that social media data be stored in Turkey, raising concerns in a country where the government has a history of cracking down on freedom of expression.
The government insists that legislation is necessary to combat cyber crime and protect the rights of users of Turkish social networks.
Human rights groups said the decision by international technology companies to yield to Turkish pressure and to 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 Expression Association claims that more than 450,000 domains and 42,000 tweets have been blocked in Turkey since October.
Facebook said on Monday that it remains committed to maintaining freedom of expression and other human rights in Turkey.
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Associated Press writer Kelvin Chan in London contributed.