Turkey’s newly updated law regulating social media achieved its biggest victory last week when Facebook announced it was beginning the process of appointing a representative to handle in-country complaints.

The law, known as Internet Law No. 5651, was amended in late July 2020 by the Turkish parliament. In its revised version, the law required that social media companies with a million or more users in Turkey had to appoint a representative to the country. In the months since the revision was approved, companies including Youtube, VKontakte, TikTok and LinkedIn all announced they would comply with the regulation.

Facebook is the largest firm to declare its intent to comply, prompting an outcry from advocacy groups who saw it as a dangerous contribution to a growing censorship regime in Turkey. Sarah Clarke, the head of U.K based advocacy group Article 19 for Europe and Central Asia, saw the news as a foreboding development for user rights and privacy in the country.

“What we’ve seen is Facebook along with Youtube and a number of social media platforms go against their own commitments to freedom of expression and in effect become an instrument of state censorship,” Clarke told Ahval in a podcast.