Presidential candidate Mustafa Bour Mohammadi promised yesterday, Thursday, to lift the bans on social media platforms that the authorities have imposed in the country for many years. During a television debate, Mohammadi stated, "I will put an end to the ban on social media sites," adding that "this ban does not befit the status of the great Iranian people."
He explained: "I will try to resolve the issue of virtual private networks and filtering as quickly as possible," noting that "in the social realm, the internet is a serious matter for me... today, the internet is like water in life." Bour Mohammadi added, "This filtering is not significant for those people, and I will act with extreme caution and obsession in choosing the Minister of Communications and Information Technology."
Since 2009, Iranian authorities have blocked apps such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube following popular protests led by the reformist opposition under the name "Green Movement Protests." Furthermore, the government of former President Hassan Rouhani blocked the Telegram app in April 2018 after protests over poor economic and living conditions. In 2022, the government of the late President Ibrahim Raisi blocked the WhatsApp and Instagram apps following protests sparked by the death of Kurdish young woman Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police in Tehran for not wearing a hijab.
Instagram and Telegram are among the most popular applications in Iran, with more than 45 million users, according to official statistics.
