The government of Turkey has this week barred advertisements to the popular microblogging website Twitter, Photo blogging platform Pinterest and a social site Periscope after the three social sites failed to appoint local representatives to their content moderation staff under the new social media law.
Turkey’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority has banned advertisements on Twitter, Periscope and Pinterest after these companies failed to appoint local representatives under a new social media law.
Under the new law, social media companies are requested to appoint local representatives from Turkey who will help review and moderate content on these social media sites according to Turkish laws.
Turkey has 13.4M Twitter Users which us the 5th highest number of Twitter users in the whole World while Pinterest is also the 7th most used Social Media in Turkey after YouTube, Instagram, Whatsapp, Twitter and FB Messenger with 34% of all Internet Users in Turkey being on Pinterest.
Turkey, just like Uganda and Thailand are among the countries that are trying so much to censor and moderate social media. Uganda recently asked a letter requesting Google to delete pro opposition YouTube channels and also restricted social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp accusing them of deleting pro-government accounts.
Thailand on the other hand threatened to take Facebook to court for allowing people in Thailand to abuse the King yet it is against the local laws governing Thailand to abuse the Thai King.
Twitter is yet to respond whether they will bend to demands of Turkish government or not.