Law Amending the Press Law and Certain Laws numbered 7418 (“Law”) was published in Official Gazette dated 18 October 2022 and numbered 31987. Accordingly, certain amendments introduced to Law numbered 5651 on the Regulation of Publications on the Internet and the Suppression of Crimes Committed by Means of Such Publications (“Law No. 5651”) with regards to the regulations related to social network providers.
Notable amendments brought by the Law within the scope of the Law No. 5651 are as follows:
- The legal entity or real person appointed as the representative of a foreign based social network provider with more than ten million daily access from Turkey, will be fully competent and liable for all technical, administrative, legal and financial matters of the social network provider, the liabilities of the social network provider are reserved.
- If the appointed representative is a legal entity, it is mandatory for this legal entity to be a branch incorporated by the social network provider as a stock company.
- If the representative of the social network provider is a real person, this person must be a resident in Turkey and also a Turkish citizen.
- The obligations of social network providers have been extended, as listed below:
- Both domestic and foreign based social network providers with more than one million daily access from Turkey have been put under the duty to submit a Turkish report in every 6 months to the Authority, reflecting their compliance with the Authority’s notified decisions in relation to removing of content and/or blocking access and/or statistical and categorical information regarding such requests addressed to them by the persons claiming the violation of their personal rights.
- The article further regulates that such reports must include information regarding header labels, algorithms related to the contents highlighted or underemphasized and social network providers’ advertisement and transparency policies.
- Within the scope of the social network providers duty to treat their users equally and impartially, the report must also include all precautions taken in this sense.
- It is also an obligation for the social network providers to publish this report on their websites.
- The obligation to ensure that the viewers clearly and easily access the parameters used when the social network providers are recommending them other contents has been brought.
- In addition, social network providers must take all necessary precautions to ensure that the users can change their preferences regarding the recommended contents and limit the use of their personal data on their websites and include this in their report.
- Furthermore, social network providers also need to establish an advertisement library containing information regarding contents, advertisers, durations of advertisements and target audience, publish this library in their websites and include it in their report.
- Social network providers must take all precautions in their systems and algorithms in order to not publish contents and header titles about the crimes within the scope Law No. 5651, reflect these in their reports and cooperate with the ICTA accordingly.
- Social network providers are put under the obligation to take necessary precautions regarding services specifically addressed to children.
- Last but not least, social network providers have become obliged to draw their crisis management plans in relation to unordinary conditions which may affect public safety and health and submit it to the ICTA.
Details of the Law can be found through this link. (Only available in Turkish)
