Tech is still critical for Iran’s protest movement — and its regime
It has been just over a year since protests erupted across Iran, after the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested by the morality police for allegedly breaching the country’s hijab law and died in police custody a few days later.
Iran has not seen uprisings of this magnitude since the Iranian Revolution of 1979: They have dwarfed the Green Movement protests of 2009, and they extend far beyond calls for an end to the mandatory hijab. Demonstrators — who range from university students to doctors to labor unions — have demanded economic reforms and the codification of women’s rights and called for “death to the dictator.” They have been met with a sharp, brutal response from Iranian authorities. Tens of thousands have been arrested and jailed, and more than 500 people have been killed in clashes with the security forces. Seven men have been executed by hanging for their involvement with the protests. And while large-scale demonstrations have mostly tapered off, acts of resistance continue.
Technology has played a role at many turns in what has happened over the past year. Social media blackouts and internet shutdowns have become a hallmark of the regime’s response to the protests: Research groups like OONI and NetBlocks have documented the blackouts, while tools like VPNs and Starlink have helped people work around them. The Google Play store, where 90% of Iranians would normally download apps, has been blocked since the protests began, to no avail.
And as with every major protest movement of the past decade, social media has been critical to the strategies of both the protesters and the regime they oppose. In Iran, where all major U.S.-based platforms are now blocked, Telegram became the go-to platform for protesters — and for the regime too. Several months ago, I spoke with Mahsa Alimardani about the power that Telegram held in this situation. Alimardani, who is a PhD candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute and a senior researcher at Article19, impressed upon me that the Iranian authorities were “thriving” on Telegram, using the platform to identify and shame protesters and even broadcast forced confessions. Coordinated disinformation campaigns are also a preferred tactic of the authorities. In a recent piece for the Atlantic Council, Alimardani described how the regime now routinely “floods” online spaces with messages and accounts that are designed to leave the opposition “distracted, disunited, and chaotic.”