Facebook declines to set up new office in Turkey as required by new social media law

A new regulation which entered into force in Turkey requires social network platforms to set up a formal presence in the country if they have more than one million daily users. The new regulation requires companies to: (a) Store user personal data in servers in the country; (b) Indicate a local representative to be answerable to the government; (c) Answer to complaints related to content in 48 hours; (c) implement court rulings in 24 hours. Penalties for not complying with the regulations include the reduction of their bandwidth by 90% for 6 months, financial sanctions ranging from 10 to 30 million Turkish liras, and advertising bans. Facebook has refused to comply with the regulation so far.