The new regulation published in the Turkish Official Gazette on 18.10.2022 has introduced significant new obligations to the Social Network Providers. In case of violation of the new obligations on the Social Network Providers, they may face certain sanctions such as administrative fine, reducing the internet traffic bandwidth and ban on advertising up to 6 months.
At first, it would be better to refer the definition of the Social Network Provider that has already been described as “natural persons or legal entities who enable users to create, view or share contents such as texts, images, recordings, location via the internet for purpose of social interaction shall be a social network provider” in the law no.5651 (“Internet Law”). It is understood that as many contributors in the social media shall fall into the definition of Social Network Provider, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube should seek their own obligations under the new terms.
You may find the most notable amendments below:
• Legal Character of the Representative in Turkey
Before the amendment, the real person representative of the foreign Social Network Provider, who has more than one million daily accesses from Turkey, should only be a Turkish citizen. With the new amendment, Turkish citizen representative must also reside in Turkey.
If the Social Network Provider with more than ten million accesses from Turkey chooses its representative as a legal entity, such entity should be established as a branch office incorporated in form of a stock corporation by the Social Network Provider.
• Additional Obligations on Providing Information to the Authorities
As per the principles of accountability and transparency, the Social Network Provider is obliged to provide all necessary information and documents regarding the compliance with the Internet Law when requested by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority.
Also, the information necessary to find the perpetrators, who create or disseminate content subject to the crimes of sexual abuse of children, dissemination of misleading information to the public, disrupting the unity and territorial integrity of the state, crimes against the constitutional order and the functioning of this order, crimes against state secrets and espionage, must be provided to the judicial authorities by the representative of the Social Network Provider in Turkey. The social Network Provider, who does not fulfill this reporting obligation may face with the sanction on reducing the internet traffic bandwidth.
If the Social Network Provider learns about the content that endangers the safety of life and property of people and in cases where it is inconvenient to delay, it shares these contents and information about the person who created the content with the authorized law enforcement units.
• Advertising Library
The Social Network Provider must create an advertising library that includes information on the advertiser, the content of the advertisements, the duration of the advertisement, the target audience, the number of people or groups reached, and publishes it on the website.
• Sanctions
New amendment also provides that an administrative fine sanction which shall be calculated as 3% of the previous year’s global revenue can be applied to the Social Network Provider, in case of failure to comply with (i) obligations on the data localization and (ii) private services to children, (iii) rules for the user rights, (iv) informing the dangerous content and its proprietor, (v) sharing the information requested by the Authority and (vi) submission of the crisis plan.
In the event that the decision to remove the content and/or block access given by the President of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority the within the scope of the Internet Law is not fulfilled, the natural and legal persons who taxpayers resident in Turkey are prohibited from giving an advertisement to and/or entering into the commercial agreement with such Social Network Provider including transferring money to the Social Network Provider in any circumstance. Also, reducing the internet traffic bandwidth can be implemented for the Social Network Provider.
In conclusion, the new liabilities and obligations considered for the Social Network Providers show that the Authority would like to strength the control over the social media platforms.
You may reach the amendments from this link.
To see our other articles, you may follow the NSN Bulletin via the link.
Authors: Bilge Derinbay, Hande Ülker Pehlivan
Contact: [email protected]