Turkey slaps advertising ban on Twitter, Pinterest

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey has slapped advertising bans on Twitter, Periscope and Pinterest over their non-compliance with a controversial new law that requires social media platforms to appoint legal representatives in the country.

The law, which human rights and media freedoms groups say amounts to censorship, forces social media companies to maintain representatives in Turkey to deal with complaints about content on their platforms.

Companies that refuse to designate an official representative are subjected to fines, followed by advertising bans and could face bandwidth reductions that would make their platforms too slow to use.

There was no immediate comment from the companies from the companies.

Facebook avoided the ban after it announced Monday that it would assign a representative.