Netizen Report: Some Iranian hardliners want the government to stop blocking Twitter.

Netizen Report: Some Iranian Hardliners Want the Government to Stop Blocking Twitter

Netizen Report: Some Iranian Hardliners Want the Government to Stop Blocking Twitter

Future Tense
The Citizen's Guide to the Future
July 21 2016 6:27 PM

Netizen Report: Some Iranian Hardliners Want the Government to Stop Blocking Twitter

169937016-an-iranian-couple-inpect-the-box-of-an-iphone-they-just
An Iranian couple inspect the box of an iPhone they just bought at a computer shop selling Apple products in northern Tehran on June 1, 2013.

Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images

The Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in internet rights around the world. It originally appears each week on Global Voices AdvocacyMahsa Alimardani, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Weiping Li, Laura Vidal, and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

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Reports of web censorship—including blocking specific websites and entire social media platforms, as well as overall internet blackouts—have been so widespread over the last two weeks that we’ve decided to dedicate this Netizen Report to the trend.

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Iranian leaders are not so sure about Pokémon Go but might stop blocking Twitter
A group of Iranian hardliners have demanded the government stop blocking Twitter in an unexpected change of tune from a group that typically stands at the forefront of policies curtailing freedom of expression. The group wants to use Twitter to counter Saudi Arabian propaganda, which it argues is part of a “psychological operation” against Iran. Propaganda concerns have increased since the recent attacks in Nice, France.

Iranian officials also have responded to Pokémon Gopledging to censor the game if the developers do not agree to cooperate with Iran’s National Foundation for Computer Games, which has censored multiple games in the past. They say they will seek to keep the game’s data servers inside of Iran, along with cooperation with the government to prohibit the game from targeting locations that could be of national security concerns. The request to keep servers inside the country might be seen as an extension of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace’s demand in May that all foreign messaging companies move the data they hold on Iranians onto servers inside the country within a year or face censorship.

In other news, Iran has put Apple on notice, stating the company has just a “few days” to register or “all iPhones will be collected from the market,” according to a report by Tasnim News. Due to sanctions against Iran, Apple had previously not officially entered the Iranian market. Smugglers, however, have brought iPhones to the country. A 2015 report suggested that there were about 6 million iPhones in circulation in Iran at that time. This new ban would not affect existing iPhone owners, but would ban further sales of the phone on the market.

Zimbabwe: #ShutdownZim protests spark WhatsApp shutdown
Protests across Zimbabwe
 over an escalating economic crisis have brought on a new wave of censorship in the country: Zimbabweans have reported not being able to access WhatsApp, which was used to organize and circulate images of the protests, and the telecom regulatory authority issued a public notice warning users they were being closely monitored and could be “easily identified,” according to the Washington Post. The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp. and radio station STAR FM also received a warning from the CEO of the Broadcasting Authority not to “broadcast programs that incite, encourage, or glamorize violence or brutality” and to avoid “broadcasting obscene and undesirable comments from participants, callers and audiences.” The government is rumored to be working on licensing an internet gateway for the country, a mechanism that would force all traffic to pass through a single portal that would be operated by the government and allow authorities broad access to internet traffic and user data.

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Brazil: WhatsApp is down, again, briefly
WhatsApp was also briefly blocked in Brazil for the third time in less than a year following a court order from a judge after failing to surrender user data to police. The Supreme Court accepted an appeal that brought the service back online four hours later, calling the lower court’s decision “not very reasonable and not very proportional.”

Kashmiris report total suspension of internet and mobile amid unrest
Following the July 8 killing of Kashmiri rebel leader Burhan Wani, internet and mobile services in the region were shut down for at least six days. Thousands of Indian soldiers are patrolling the streets and have used tear gas and pellets on protesters. Several Kashmiris have also reported having their social media accounts suspended in what free expression advocates Baba Umar and Nighat Dad suspect might be a campaign by trolls to flag their accounts.

Turkey’s coup attempt sees a 50 percent drop in internet traffic
Meanwhile, during the attempted coup in Turkey, internet users reported having trouble accessing a range of websites and services including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. CloudFlare reported an approximately 50 percent drop in Turkey’s total internet traffic during the unrest. Yet what at first appeared to be at least a partial blackout typical of past periods of unrest in Turkey soon turned on its head, as President Erdogan turned to Twitter—which he described in 2013 as a “menace to society”—and Apple’s FaceTime to address the country. Websites continue to be blocked as of Thursday afternoon in the aftermath of the attempted coup, with the Turkish site Engelli Web (Disabled Web) reporting that a judge approved the censorship of 20 websites. And following Wikileaks’ release of nearly 300,000 emails sent to and from officials of the AKP, Erdogan’s party, Wikileaks was blocked, too.

Ethiopia: #OromoProtests trigger broad social media censorship
Ethiopian telecommunication company EthioTelecom blocked social media platforms including Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger for at least two months, beginning in December, in Oromia, where students are protesting the government’s plan to expand the capital city, Addis Ababa, into neighboring farm lands in the state. The telco also reportedly plans to enforce a new price scheme to more heavily regulate data plans and what kinds of apps users can operate on their devices. Oh, and it intends to track, identify, and ban any mobile devices not purchased from the Ethiopian market, making it easier for the company to track data sent to and from subscribers on the network. The protests in Oromia, which began in November 2015, have been the largest and bloodiest demonstrations against the Ethiopian government in a decade, with at least 400 people killed, more injured, and thousands jailed.

Nicaragua might get rid of its “internet tax”
The Nicaraguan government is considering a repeal of its internet tax in order to improve national connectivity. Currently the government charges a 20 percent tax on mobile terminals, resulting in high costs for internet users. The announcement followed meetings between government officials and entrepreneurs in the telecommunications sector to explore ways to improve infrastructure.

New Research
•    “Examining internet Freedom in Latin America: Colombia”—Association for Progressive Communications
•    “FAST Africa: The 2016 Action Week and Beyond”—World Wide Web Foundation
•    “The Online Intermediary Liability Research Project”—Center for Advanced Studies and Research on Innovation Policy, University of Washington School of Law

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