Sultan of censorship

摘要

TURKEY'S PRESIDENT, Recep Tayyip Er-dogan, has already neutered the traditional media, putting critical journalists out of work or behind bars and using friendly tycoons to take over the country's top newspapers and news channels. Now he has taken aim at the internet. His latest assault came on July 29th when parliament adopted a law designed to force social-media giants to comply with Turkish requests to remove content. Henceforth, companies such as Twitter and Facebook will have to appoint local representatives to process such requests within 48 hours. Those who do not comply will face bans on advertising, fines of up to $6m, and eventually bandwidth cuts of up to 90%, which would make them unusable.