Turkey's draconian social media law in effect, tech giants obliged to appoint representatives

Turkey's new social media regulation went into effect on Oct. 1, bringing along a string of restrictions on platforms. Social media companies will be required to appoint representatives in Turkey, which will place them under Turkish jurisdiction. If companies fail to comply, they will face fines, advertisement bans, and a significant reduction of their bandwidth.

Thursday October 01 2020 12:04 pm

Duvar English

Turkey's new social media regulation went into effect on Oct. 1, bringing along a string of restrictions for social media companies, including the requirement to open offices in Turkey, and a halving of their bandwidth if they fail to comply.

The new legislation requires that social media platforms with more than one million users to appoint representatives in Turkey, effectively placing them under Turkish jurisdiction.

If social media companies fail to comply with this requirement, they will face administrative fines, advertisement bans, and finally, gradual lowering of their bandwidth in the country until access is practically barred.

The regulation also allows social media users to report content that they believe violates their rights, and social media representatives will be mandated to respond to these reports within 48 hours, or face five million liras in fines.

The companies' representatives will also be required to prepare reports about their activity every six months, or face 10 million liras in fines.

Turkey's Access Providers Association (ESB) will be able to remove content that is ruled by courts to be in violation of rights, whereas they could only ban access to such content before.

The ESB is required to remove any content in violation of rights within four hours, and social media users will be allowed to require the removal of any content from search engines.