ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iran’s communications minister on Sunday said that no social media platform will be exempt from unbans, a month after bans were lifted from major platforms WhatsApp and Google Play.
“No platform is excluded from filtering, the filtering mechanisms of all platforms are foreseen, and the filtering of platforms is determined according to people's needs, summarized and determined in negotiations,” Minister of Communications Sattar Hashemi told the state IRNA news agency.
Bans on WhatsApp and Google Play were lifted following a decision by Iran's Supreme Cyberspace Council (SCC) in late December.
Hashemi stated that the most important step toward lifting the bans was their “reopening” of the two platforms.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who came to power in the summer, in November called for a new approach to restricted social media access following public dissatisfaction over government-imposed censorship which has intensified in recent years.
In 2021, the Iranian parliament passed the User Protection Bill (Tarhe-Sianat) to disrupt access to international online services in Iran. The bill was initially passed but later revoked due to an unclear procedural process.
The Iranian president directed Amin Aghamiri, the secretary of SCC, to form a committee tasked with investigating the issue and presenting a solution.
The SCC was founded in 2012 with the order of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to limit access to social media and broadcast and monitor the prohibited activities of citizens.
The Iranian government frequently cracks down on the internet during periods of heightened tensions and protests, especially in the 2022 “Women, Life, Freedom” movement sparked by the death of Kurdish woman Zhina (Mahsa) Amini while in custody of Iran’s so-called morality police and a week-long internet crackdown in response to the 2019 protests, infamously known as Bloody November.
