For those who
didn’t know initially, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter were banned
in Iran in 2009 after the Iranian government claimed social media aided the
protests that broke out in 2009 as a result of the re-election of former
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term.
The new
president Hassan Rouhani came into government in August and there are
expectations he could reduce the ban on social media as he promised during his
campaigns.
However, on
Monday, Iranians were able to access Facebook and Twitter for the first time in
four years without using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to bypass the
country’s firewall.
This was
short-lived as the firewall was back on Tuesday. Iranian officials have now
claimed that Iran didn’t pull down its firewall and there was access to the
sites because of a technical glitch.
“The lack of
a filter on Facebook last night was apparently due to technical problems and
the technological committee is investigating this issue,” Abdolsamad
Khoramabadi, secretary of state panel that filters sites, told Iran’s Mehr news
agency.
There were
reports that one of the internet service providers (ISPs) slipped up.
Abdolsamad claimed this is under investigation.
“We are
investigating which of companies has done this.” he said.
There have
been rumours that Iran intentionally removed the firewall to see how Iranians
would behave on the social sites but some analysts have claimed (which makes
sense) it could never have been Iran since porn sites were also available
during the glitch.
President
Rouhani will have to get approval from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
whenever he wants to make any changes to Iran’s internet censorship.
Posts
Facebook and Twitter became available in Iran because of…