ISTANBUL: Facebook has started the process of assigning a legal representative in Turkey to comply with a law governing social media companies, Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency said Monday.
The law, which passed in July, requires social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to maintain representatives in Turkey to deal with complaints about content on their platforms. Companies refusing to designate an official representative are subject to fines, advertising bans and bandwidth reductions that would make their networks too slow to use.
The local representative of social media companies would be tasked with responding to individual requests to take down content violating privacy and personal rights within 48 hours or to provide grounds for rejection. The company would be held liable for damages if the content is not removed or blocked within 24 hours.
The law also requires social media data to be stored in Turkey, raising concerns in a country where the government has a track record of clamping down on free speech.
Turkish authorities have fined the social media giant at least 40 million Turkish lira ($5.3 million) for not complying with the request to assign a representative. Advertising bans for companies who have not complied are set to begin Tuesday.
Facebook will join LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Dailymotion and the Russian social media site VKontakte in setting up legal entities in Turkey. Facebook did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
Amnesty International’s Turkey campaigner Milena Buyum tweeted the law undermines freedom of expression online in a country where independent media is already curtailed .
“The consequences of compliance for human rights are huge: companies would not be able to resist arbitrary blocking/banning requests, would be compelled to provide user data,” she said.
Facebook bows to Turkish demand to name local representative
https://arab.news/zsb58
Facebook bows to Turkish demand to name local representative
- Facebook said that if it faces pressure on those standards or the global process for reviewing government requests it will withdraw the representative
- Critics have said the law muzzles dissent from people who have turned to online platforms as Ankara has tightened its grip on mainstream media
Mark Zuckerberg set to testify in watershed social media trial
- The plaintiff, a now 20-year-old woman, is seeking to hold social media companies responsible for harms to children who use their platforms
- Zuckerberg’s testimony comes a week after the testimony of Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta’s Instagram
LOS ANGELES: Mark Zuckerberg will testify in an unprecedented social media trial that questions whether Meta’s platforms deliberately addict and harm children.
Meta’s CEO is expected to answer tough questions on Wednesday from attorneys representing a now 20-year-old woman identified by the initials KGM, who claims her early use of social media addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts. Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snap have settled.
Zuckerberg has testified in other trials and answered questions from Congress about youth safety on Meta’s platforms, and he apologized to families at that hearing whose lives had been upended by tragedies they believed were because of social media. This trial, though, marks the first time Zuckerberg will answer similar questions in front of a jury. and, again, bereaved parents are expected to be in the limited courtroom seats available to the public.
The case, along with two others, has been selected as a bellwether trial, meaning its outcome could impact how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies would play out.
A Meta spokesperson said the company strongly disagrees with the allegations in the lawsuit and said they are “confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.”
One of Meta’s attorneys, Paul Schmidt, said in his opening statement that the company is not disputing that KGM experienced mental health struggles, but rather that Instagram played a substantial factor in those struggles. He pointed to medical records that showed a turbulent home life, and both he and an attorney representing YouTube argue she turned to their platforms as a coping mechanism or a means of escaping her mental health struggles.
Zuckerberg’s testimony comes a week after that of Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta’s Instagram, who said in the courtroom that he disagrees with the idea that people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms. Mosseri maintained that Instagram works hard to protect young people using the service, and said it’s “not good for the company, over the long run, to make decisions that profit for us but are poor for people’s well-being.”
Much of Mosseri’s questioning from the plaintiff’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, centered on cosmetic filters on Instagram that changed people’s appearance — a topic that Lanier is sure to revisit with Zuckerberg. He is also expected to face questions about Instagram’s algorithm, the infinite nature of Meta’ feeds and other features the plaintiffs argue are designed to get users hooked.
Meta is also facing a separate trial in New Mexico that began last week.
