Turkey hits platforms with advertising ban

Turkey on Tuesday slapped advertising bans on Twitter, Periscope and Pinterest over their noncompliance with a controversial new law that requires social media platforms to appoint legal representatives in the country.

The law — which human rights and media freedom groups say amounts to censorship — forces social media companies to maintain representatives in Turkey to deal with complaints about content on their platforms. Companies that refuse to designate an official representative are subjected to fines, followed by advertising bans and could face bandwidth reductions that would make their platforms too slow to use.

Facebook avoided the advertising ban after it announced Monday that it had begun the process of assigning a legal entity in Turkey, joining LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Dailymotion and the Russian social media site VKontakte, which have agreed to the new law.

The law also requires social media data to be stored in Turkey, which has a track record of clamping down on free speech.