Iranian Media: Authorities Plan to Block Telegram on Election Day

Authorities are planning to block Iranians’ access to the popular messaging app Telegram prior to the parliamentary elections on Friday, reported the conservative Iranian news website Alef today, February 22.

The prominent news website is owned and supervised by Ahmad Tavakkoli, a conservative member of Iran’s parliament who formerly served as minister of labor and social affairs and president of the parliamentary research center.

Alef reported that according to an unnamed Iranian official, authorities are planning to block or slow down Telegram in Iran on Thursday February 25 – one day before election day – until the elections are over.

The anonymous source said the authorities would block Telegram to prevent candidates from using the app for campaign purposes. Under Iranian law, candidates are banned from campaigning the final 24 hours before election day. “The government won’t be able to monitor and control the candidates’ campaigns on social media in the final days before the elections. Therefore it will block the app,” reported Alef.

So far, Telegram is officially open to all Iranians, but it has been under huge pressure from conservative factions in the country. The encrypted messaging and content sharing application has become popular among Iranians, who especially use it for sharing news and opinion. The app, which is believed to be used by one in four Iranians, is set to play a major role during the elections.

Although Iran’s Filtering Committee has said it will not block Telegram, the committee could give the app and its users a hard time. On February 15, Mohammad Reza Aghamiri, a conservative politician and member of Iran’s Filtering Committee said that if Telegram does not follow the Iranian authorities’ demands, the app will be “removed”, suggesting that the authorities are planning to use other tools apart from traditional filtering to limit Iranians’ access to Telegram.

According to Ali Bangi, director of ASL19, a Toronto-based technology and research lab that helps Iranians bypass internet censorship, the fate of Telegram all depends on what happens on the ground this week.

“In 2009, Facebook was open before the election,” he said in an interview with Journalism Is Not A Crime. “But because the opposition used it very well for mobilization and protest, especially after the election, the authorities started to see Facebook as their enemy and decided to block. I think Telegram is going to play the same role this time. It’s open; both sides are using it. The one that has the power to control it, if they realize that the other side is doing a good job using Telegram, they can decide to go after the app.”