Facebook: No Longer a Threat to Iran?
Iranian netizens are still puzzled by a recent decision by their country’s authorities to unblock Facebook, a popular social networking site. A recent feature in RFE/RL offers several explanations as to what Iranian officials may have been thinking. It’s quite likely that the government simply wants to curry favor with young people before the upcoming ...
Iranian netizens are still puzzled by a recent decision by their country's authorities to unblock Facebook, a popular social networking site. A recent feature in RFE/RL offers several explanations as to what Iranian officials may have been thinking. It's quite likely that the government simply wants to curry favor with young people before the upcoming elections; unblocking Facebook thus is only a symbolic move (a more sophisticated version of this theory states that before unblocking the site, the government had hired enough "online monitors" to closely observe sensitive discussions on Facebook, thus gaining access to an important channel of communications). Another theory holds that the Iranian ultra-conservative clerics need the Internet - almost as much as their secular pro-democracy opponents - to spread their gospel and mobilize supporters:
Well-known Iranian satirist Ebrahim Nabavi, who is based in Belgium, has a different explanation about why Iran has decided to unblock Facebook. “It’s not like we’re the only people who need Facebook to get in touch with people inside Iran,” Nabavi says. “Mesbah Yazdi [an ultra hard-line ayatollah said to be the spiritual mentor of current President Mahmud Ahmadinejad] also needs the Internet to be in touch with the supporters of the kind of Islam he preaches in Italy, Britain, and elsewhere.
Of course, these theories are not mutually exclusive; unblocking Facebook may help the Iranian government achieve several objectives at once. My own take is that this decision reveals that the Iranian authorities have reached a certain level of comfort with the Internet, rooting for subtle control and manipulation rather than brutal censorship (it helps that the former doesn’t generate bad press, unlike the latter). I’m curious as to whether Ahmadinejad would be bold enough to get a Facebook profile.
Photo by _Max B/Flickr
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