Tehran, Iran, April.24
Trend:
The Secretary of Iranian Supreme Cyberspace Council Abolhassan Firoozabadi announced that the recent efforts of Instagram to block pages of Iranian officials, are doomed.
He furthers said that filtering Instagram is not currently on the official agenda in Iran, Trend reports via ISNA.
On April 16, a day after Washington's designation of the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) came into effect, Iran's high-ranking general Ghasem Soleimani's page, along with the Instagram pages of several other IRGC commanders, were blocked.
The Secretary of Iranian Supreme Cyberspace Council went on to say that foreign messengers and social platforms are not reliable for Iranian people.
"There should be national messengers; of course, that's hard, but it will be done in the near future," he said.
In January, the National Cyberspace Council approved steps toward blocking Instagram, Javad Javidnia, deputy for cyberspace affairs at the public prosecutor’s office, was cited as saying by the semi-official Donya-e Eqtesad newspaper.
Since Facebook and Twitter are officially blocked in Iran, Instagram gained immense popularity among Iranians. That means its 24 million users in Iran — almost a third of Iran’s population — do not have to bother with proxy apps to log on to Instagram.