ANKARA — Meta announced on Monday that it will temporarily close its Turkish social media platform Threads on April 29, following an order from Turkey’s competition authority.
The parent company of several social media platforms, including Facebook and messaging app WhatsApp, added that the temporary closure will not affect other meta services in Turkey or threads in other markets.
Turkish Threads users will be able to deactivate or delete their accounts and download their own content during the closure.
Posts and conversations from profiles that were deactivated during the shutdown will reappear once access to the threads is restored in the country, the statement said.
It remains unclear when or if the platform will be available again in Turkey.
The announcement comes after Turkey’s Competition Commission found that Meta abused its dominant market position and violated the country’s antitrust laws by failing to seek users’ permission for cross-platform data sharing between Instagram and Threads. This comes in response to last month’s ruling.
Meanwhile, Meta claims that both platforms are built on the same backend infrastructure, which allows the company to implement a suite of Instagram features, including the security measures used in Threads.
The board also fined the company approximately $148,000 per day and ruled that the fine will continue until the company takes additional steps to address violations resulting from cross-platform data sharing. did.
