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| Facebook begins the process of appointing its representative in Turkey |
Facebook announced on Monday that it has begun appointing legal entities as local representatives in Turkey under the new social media law.
The law allows authorities to remove content from the platform instead of blocking access as in the past.
After Ankara tightened its control over the main media, people turned to more platforms on the Internet, which attracted people's attention.
Last year, Turkey fined 40 million Turkish liras ($ 5.43 million) on several social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for violating social media laws.
The law requires platforms that are visited more than a million times a day in Turkey to appoint local representatives.
This also includes other sanctions, including banning Turkish companies from advertising on various platforms, and initiating sanctions would be an ongoing violation of this measure.
Facebook's decision was made the day before to implement ad blocking. The Silicon Valley-based company said its decision will not change its community standards, which define what Facebook permits and bans, and its government requirements review process.
The company said in a statement that if the agent is subjected to pressure from society's standards and reviews government demands, the agent may be removed, adding that he will continue to work to respect freedom of expression and others. Human rights in Turkey.
Other companies have also hired agents under a recently amended Internet law. Google's YouTube platform announced a month ago that it had already made such a decision.
So far, social media platforms VK, YouTube TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram and Dailymotion have decided to set up a local office in the country.
According to the law, social media companies are required to respond to Turkish government requests in Turkish language and requests for privacy rights and data protection within 48 hours.
These platforms are also expected to publish semi-annual reports to clarify the response rate to these inquiries and steps should be taken to host user data in Turkey in that country.
In recent months, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have all been fined for breaking the law.
Organizations breaking the law will have to reduce their bandwidth by 90% and block access.
Turkey has historically been the country with the highest number of content removal requests, Twitter said in a report released earlier this month. In the first half of last year, Twitter ranked fourth, accounting for 10% of all lawsuits in the world.