Turkey Slaps Ad Ban on Twitter Under New Social Media Law (reuters.com) 37
Ankara has imposed advertising bans on Twitter, Periscope and Pinterest after they failed to appoint local representatives in Turkey under a new social media law, according to decisions published on Tuesday. From a report: Under the law, which critics say stifles dissent, social media companies that do not appoint such representatives are liable for a series of penalties, including the latest move by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK). The law allows authorities to remove content from platforms, rather than blocking access as they did in the past. It has caused concern as people turn more to online platforms after Ankara tightened its grip on mainstream media. The latest decisions in the country's Official Gazette said the advertising bans went into effect from Tuesday. Twitter, its live-streaming app Periscope, and image sharing app Pinterest were not immediately available to comment.
Their smartest move here is not to play (Score:3)
They're better off getting blocked in Turkey than hiring a government censor. It's easier to get unblocked by popular demand than it is to get rid of someone like that.
Re: Their smartest move here is not to play (Score:4, Informative)
Facebook went ahead and censored their platform on behalf of the local dictator.
Not sure why this article doesnâ(TM)t mention it but they did hire the required local censors.
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Wouldn't even have to block, just don't have any business interests there. They can only enforce the law against things that exist in their jurisdiction.
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This means that any contract for advertisement with Twitter, Periscope and Pinterest is illegal and no company can pay for an advertisement or receive advertisement income. You cannot have it on your company books. This includes the branches of large internationals like let's say Coca Cola which want to do global campaigns. For them Turkey just dropped off the map which is a major pain in the ass. This is furt
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Better off for whom?
Twitter is about making money, and government censorship is hardly Twitter's problem. Regardless of how many posts (within reason) get censored, Twitter still makes more money accepting the censors than losing the entire country. They can even virtue signal about free speech and whatnot, but at the end of the day, freedom of speech matters far less than revenue.
That's why Donald Trump wasn't censored until after his statements had their effect. Twitter wanted the ad revenue from
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Better off for whom?
Better for Twitter. Fascism is costly. First they come for your advertisements. Then they come for your head.
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Again, how is this a problem for Twitter if they have to replace their in-country representative every year or so? That's business as usual for most large corporations.
Granted, I woudn't want to be that executive - but that's simply because I would have to explain to the Americans there are certain things they just can't do. Americans have a habit of supporting things - like homosexuality - that are patently offensive to Islam, and I wouldn't want to have to explain just how offensive tweets in support
If Twitter had any value whatsoever... (Score:2)
... they could demand payment instead of ads.
[Of course I'm not saying Turkey's leadership is not totalitarian religious nutjobs at this point. As usual, everyone is a dick in this story.]
But given as it is, any idiot could create a Twitter equivalent with any blog site and a single evening of adding trivial ridiculous artificial restrictions like a character limit.
If Twitter died, the time to switch to another platform would be measured in hours.
Free online speech could've done so much good (Score:4, Insightful)
The current demonification of popular opinion sharing sites, though justified in many ways, will of course be used to the advantage of those regimes hell bent on squelching dissent.
In the West, free expression breeds cult-like conspiracy cells that undermine the very democracy that allows it. In Turkey, free expression undermines the authoritarian religious government.
Any government by the people, and for the people, will eventually succumb to the people.
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Any government by the people, and for the people, will eventually succumb to the people.
What does that have to do with the USA, where we have government by, of, and for corporations? If you look at who's getting our alleged representatives elected, you can clearly see who's calling the tune after paying the piper. Only a small minority of them work for us.
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we have government of the people by and for corporations.
Fixed that for you.
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In other words, free speech is a check on government. Probably why it's the first Amendment.
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Correct. With few exceptions, it allows the people to say what they want about the government without fear of reprisal. It came about as a direct result of the Crown's actions against people who spoke out.
The same with freedom of the press. It also holds the government accountable, such as in the Watergate papers, and keeps the public informed, something the Crown didn't like.
The separation of Church and State embedded in the First Amend
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Here in Europe Trump being kicked off the service has lead to a lot of politicians to come out, mo
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If government needs to make announcements and such, every government has a communications department to which such things can be made.
So the only reason for a government to use Twitter is to advertise itself - it posts some story and makes a Twitter announcement to let others know. If Twitter de-platforms the government, the government isn't speechless - it still has its own operating communications system of websites and other things.
And you and I are free to use our own systems - I'm not forced to use Twi
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And you and I are free to use our own systems - I'm not forced to use Twitter - I can run my own blog on my own website like millions of other people.
You can always write a blog but that doesn't mean that a blog hosting site will allow you to publish on their site. You could then say well I'll run my own web server but then all of the DNS providers like GoDaddy can refuse register your domain name. So good luck trying to get your message across when people have to remember your IP address in order to reach it. That is assuming your ISP hasn't cancelled you for some violation of their service agreement.
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Like with actual redlining the people who are subject to technically still have all the same rights as e
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It's unfortunately undeniable that these days the public forum is very much on corporate-owned platforms like twitter. Hence what's considered acceptable speech in the public forum is in the hands of corporations that are ultimately unaccountable to the public, politicians or anyone except their shareholders. Whose primary concern is how much money they're personally making, not the interests of society.
Therein lies the rub. Theoretically, the corporations are accountable to the people and their representatives.
In nations with governments that allow the unfettered influence we know as political contributions, the lack of political will for campaign finance reform prevents any reasonable expectation of curbing corporate influence in the election process, and ultimately, in the legislation of the people's business.
In authoritarian countries, the power of corporations is accountable to government leaders.
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What does Twitter have to do with free speech?
Alright. Fair question. I guess it just depends on who you ask.
The sitting President? or, Taylor Swift? [wikipedia.org]
Turkey wants scapegoats (Score:5, Insightful)
They need "in-country representatives" that can be arrested, tried, convicted, and punished when something "evil" happens.
Anyone stupid enough to apply for such a jobs will, of course, work diligently to protect their lives.
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Twitter operating model used to be that it does not have in-country entities. It even tried not to have them in Europe, but that did not go down very well with the European commission. It was the FIRST entity to point a gun to Twitter's head and say: "You do what we say or the birdie gets it". Twitter complied. Funny how people forgot that - I guess everyone's memory and attention span is limited by only a few years.
With the whole of the world voting for ever tightening varieties of GDPR like
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They need "in-country representatives"
That's a job opening ad I'd like to see. "Only Armenians need apply."
Change of names (Score:2)
They should enforce social media to carry more meaningful names than Twitter and Facebook. If Twitter got renamed into Warcry and Facebook into Fightclub then their purpose would become more obvious to all generations. These companies have weaponized people's thoughts, but then carry cute and harmless sounding names, which is why we have all this trouble with them. Countless of grand parents trying to tweet their grand children have ended up in cults and extremist groups. Just again did I see a granddad get
The stifle dissent for free in the US (Score:3)
Seems like a missed opportunity for Twitter to branch out their "right think" into a full fledged, world wide business opportunity. There are a lot of governments that would be happy to dump money on them to do in their country what they do in the US for free.
Probably one of the reasons Gab was targeted (Score:2)
Gab's business model was based on no spying, no ads, nothing. Free users get basic features, pro users get a lot of more advanced features.
If Gab had been allowed to succeed in going after Twitter, it would have done incalculable damage to Google and Facebook and been a stepping stone toward a "yu are the customer, not the product" Internet.
And now you know the secret behind the reeing about Gab.
Facebook already gave in (Score:2)
This is unfortunate, but Facebook has already gave in to the demands:
https://www.usnews.com/news/bu... [usnews.com]
What that means, is there is a permanent hosta^h^h^h^h^h...representative in the country. In the event of a resistance to a takedown request we can guess what will happen. Actually takedown is not the big issue, they could also ask for private information for any user they don't like. Remember what happened with Yahoo and China back in the day.
So, you change your mind, and want the ho^h^h...representative t
Banning ads for Turkey Slaps? (Score:1)
Reminds me of Soviet Russia (Score:2)
One story I remember hearing about was in an apartment block, the dimensions of the apartments didn't match the dimensions of the building. Came to find out there was a small gap in the walls where Russian minders could stand behind and liste