Published on 01/19/2021 at 10:10 am
Updated 01/20/2021 at 8:30 a.m.
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Headwinds for Twitter in Turkey. The country led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan will ban advertising revenue for the American giant, a punitive measure that aims to force the social network to appoint a local representative and obey requests to remove content from the courts. The Twitter-owned Periscope live video-sharing app as well as the social network Pinterest are also targeted by this advertising revenue ban, a decision published in the Turkish Official Journal. The implementation of this measure “will be carefully supervised by our institutions (…) Fines will be drawn up against companies that pay them advertising revenue”, warned the Turkish Deputy Minister of Transport and Infrastructures, Omer Fatih Sayan , on Twitter.
This sanction is part of a law that came into force in October which obliges major social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, to appoint a representative in Turkey and obey the courts requesting the removal of certain content within 48 hours. . For its detractors, this law opens the door to censorship, the Turkish authorities tirelessly tracking down critics on social networks. On Monday, a few hours before the ban on advertising revenue came into force, Facebook gave in by announcing that it would appoint a representative in Turkey, while reaffirming its commitment to freedom of expression.
>> Read also – Why these internet users are leaving Facebook and Twitter
Before Facebook, other platforms like YouTube and TikTok had followed the same path. After Facebook’s announcement on Monday, the NGO Amnesty International estimated that social networks risked “becoming the instruments of state censorship”. To force recalcitrant like Twitter to obey, the Turkish authorities have also planned a gradual reduction in their bandwidth: it will be halved in April, then reduced by 90% in May, which would de facto make these social networks inaccessible.
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Social networks are closely watched by the Turkish government and numerous lawsuits for “insulting the head of state” or “terrorist propaganda” have been brought on the basis of simple tweets. In 2019, Turkey blocked access to 408,000 sites, 40,000 tweets, 10,000 YouTube videos and 6,200 shares on Facebook, according to a report by the Freedom of Expression Association.
>> To read also – When Facebook removes its mention “it’s free and it always will be”
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