NUR-SULTAN Reuters - Kazakhstan's parliament approved a bill on Wednesday requiring owners of foreign social media and messaging apps to set up offices in the country or risk being blocked as part of a campaign against cyberbullying.
The draft law, which passed its first reading in the lower house of parliament, focuses on protecting children's rights but includes provisions regarding social media and messaging software, which some critics regard as a tool to censor online comments.
Once the bill has passed by the president and senate, it will require the owners of such apps to register with authorities and open offices in Central Asian nation, moves the government says will streamline the handling of official requests to remove illegal content.
The local offices must be led by Kazakh citizens who will be personally responsible for blocking cyberbullying - content - such as posts deemed to amount to illegal behavior - within 24 hours of being notified, according to the draft.
In July, the nation of 19 million briefly blocked access to Microsoft's official LinkedIn website over what it said were fake casino advertisements and online accounts. At the time it complained that LinkedIn was ignoring its requests to clean up the content.
However, critics say the law could instead be used to remove content inconvenient for those in power in major oil exporter Kazakhstan, once part of the Soviet Union.
What kind of children will these rules protect? Perhaps only those of MPs and civil servants, written in Facebook by journalists and bloggers, Adil Jalilov, head of the Kazakh-based MediaNet journalism centre, did investigated.