Influencer sentenced to seven years in prison over Twitter post

Turkish Twitter celebrity Pınar Karagöz (also known as Pucca) was accused by the government of advocating drug consumption and attempting to use social media to overthrow the government. In 2018, Pucca tweeted, ‘hundreds of poor people are able to earn their bread by selling drugs’ in reference to a Netflix series about the Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar. Her prison sentence was reduced from seven years to five years and ten months, in addition to a fine of USD$ 11 000. She was further accused of using social media to overthrow the government and according to the court, ‘taking into account the impact of social media in society, it is possible to conclude that in some countries, social media has managed to overthrow the government by uniting people under specific ideologies.’ While many Internet users condemned such a sentence for being unfair and salient censorship by the Turkish authorities, others support the ruling and have accused Pucca of setting a bad example for the youth.