From a “shell” of foreign apps to a focus on domestic versions, the directive contains hints about the future of the internet in Iran.
Tehran, Iran – A new regulatory directive by Iran’s top internet governing body shows how authorities hope to steer Iranians away from foreign platforms and towards local ones.
Earlier this week, Iran’s highest internet policy-making body issued a directive setting out new rules that could have far-reaching implications for the country’s already constrained internet environment, but the agency said the directive was It is said to have been approved by Ali Hosseini Khamenei.
The Supreme Council of Cyberspace (SCC) claimed that the use of “sophistication-breaking tools” is currently “prohibited” unless the user has legal permission.
This is a new term coined by Iranian authorities for virtual private networks (VPNs), online privacy tools that mask users’ IP (Internet Protocol), allowing most Iranians to circumvent strict internet restrictions. I use it regularly to.
All major social media platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Telegram, are banned in Iran, but like thousands of websites, they remain highly popular with tens of millions of users and have been around for many years. Over the years, users have come to rely on avoidance tools.
Iran made buying and selling VPNs illegal in 2022, but news that the use of VPNs would be banned even in non-commercial transactions sparked a backlash online.
Many have pointed out that making VPN use illegal would effectively target most people in the country, as the overwhelming majority of Iranians have no choice but to use a VPN if they want to access free internet. are doing.
The head of the SCC, Mohammad Amin Aghamili, told state television the day after the riots that the restrictions do not include the general public, but only the supreme leadership, the presidential office, the judiciary, parliament and other top institutions of the state. He said it is aimed only at .
drive away foreign platforms
But regardless of who the VPN ban targets, the SCC directive also includes other regulations that call for major changes to Iran’s internet landscape.
For example, the Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with the Ministry of Economy and Information and Communications Technology (ICT), has announced a plan in a month to encourage content creators and companies operating on foreign platforms to remain “strictly on domestic platforms”. We request that you summarize the information within the following time. . The goal is to drive at least half of the target users locally to his platform within 6 months.
Effectively, this means that the SCC wants much of the content created by people inside Iran on sites like the wildly popular Instagram and YouTube to be migrated to local platforms. It is unclear how the government expects to achieve this in the coming months.
The directive states that “any advertising by legal entities on foreign platforms is illegal” and requires the Ministry of Culture, state television, law enforcement agencies, the Ministry of Economy, and judicial authorities to monitor this and report on a quarterly basis. Requires reporting.
Additionally, the ICT Ministry is tasked with providing “comprehensive and essential government services” “exclusively” on local platforms, and plans to have at least two services ready within six months.
Some of them have been in development for several years.
The Iranian state is working on a “National Information Network,” which will require websites and services to locate servers within Iran, limit some government services to local platforms only, and encourage the use of local networks. Global Internet traffic costs twice as much as local traffic. service.
Unblocked “shell” of foreign platforms
Other parts of the SCC Directive could also have a major impact on how social media platforms are used in Iran.
The law stipulates that authorities must provide the technical capacity for Iranians to access “useful foreign services” in a “form that can be controlled by the government.”
This includes negotiations for foreign platforms to establish representative offices in Iran, in addition to a built-in “window of access” for domestic platforms and a “shell” for foreign platforms that will not be blocked as in the main version. He said that there is a possibility that
Foreign companies operating social media platforms have not agreed to have representatives in Iran, which would require them to be accountable to the Iranian state, but major brands such as US-based Meta He says he is not interested.
When it comes to so-called shelling, Iranians have experienced it before and have been exposed to invasions of privacy as a result.
In 2018, after Iran blocked the hugely popular messaging app Telegram for allegedly being used to incite and enable “riots” during periods of protests and unrest, the app The unfiltered shell of began to be used by the Iranians.
Iran also suffered a near-total internet blackout that lasted almost a week during protests in November 2019, which began after the government sharply increased gasoline prices.
These shells allow unblocked access, but the user’s data becomes accessible as it passes through the shell before reaching the origin app’s servers. This exposed millions of Iranians to data breaches and fraud before people realized the danger.
Now, the Iranian state wants to officially support such a shell, essentially calling on people to use it instead of the main app, which remains blocked.
Internet restrictions in Iran have reached a new level since nationwide protests began in September 2022 following the death of 22-year-old Martha Amini in police custody.
