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Iran threatens to ban social media sites

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How far would you go to safeguard ‘morality’? The Iran government seems to think there’s no end to it. The Supreme Council of Cyberspace of Iran has threatened to ban all social media companies operating in the country, if they don’t provide them with all the data related to Iranian users, within one year.

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Iran’s TV channel quoted the secretary of the council Abolhasan Firouzabadi saying that the data “held by foreign social media related to Iranian citizens,” including pictures, videos, or movies shared by Iranians, “have to move to Iran.” The secretary did not elaborate on what he means by “move to Iran”. The move is expected to hurt the operations of Russian Telegram app, the most popular instant messaging service in Iran, and also Instagram. As far as other social media platforms and messaging sites are concerned, such as Facebook, Iran has already but a ban on them. Iranian youth rather use proxies to connect to these sites.

The move is aimed to crackdown on “un-islamic acts” by Iranians, and especially women.

Iran has already begun victimization of photo sharing sites such as Instagram. The police is said to have arrested at least eight people for “un-Islamic acts” on social media this month. The bone of contention here is promotion of modelling and women posting photos without wearing a headscarf. The authorities also claim that Kim Kardashian is acting as a “spy” on behalf of Instagram to subvert Islamic values.

In a rather disturbing statement, Prosecutor General of Tehran Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, said, “In the past two years, a lot of good things have been done in the fight against hair salons and fashion workshops related to modeling.” The unorthodox approach of the Iranian government has forced several well-known models to flee the country.

The television announcement was accompanied by a video footage of famous Iranian celebrity model Elham Arab, where she is seen with a black chador on her head, hiding her blonde hair. “All people love beauty and fame,” Arab said. “They would like to be seen, but it is important to know what price they will pay to be seen.” She apologised and said it was “wrong to go into the fashion industry.” However, whoever follows Iranian media would know that it is common for the Iranian government to televise forced confessions on national TV.