Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 9
By Fatih Karimov – Trend:
Iran is determined to prevent the spread of Blue Whale Challenge, an online dare game that has been linked to several teen deaths across the world.
The Islamic Republic’s ICT Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi wrote in an Instagram post that the game is inspired by “satanic ideas” and his ministry will try to prevent its penetration to Iran in order to protect the country’s youth.
“Today, we will negotiate with managers of the [Russian] VK social network for non-proliferation of violence,” Azari Jahromi wrote on his Instagram page Sept. 7. “We will try to do this, despite that this social network is blocked in Iran.”
The minister’s concerns about access of Iranian users to Blue Whale Challenge, despite Iran’s blocking the VK, indicates that the Islamic Republic’s internet filtering policy has practically failed.
Several globally popular networks, such as Twitter and Facebook are banned in Iran while users are still able to access them via proxies, bypassing 'gates' meant to block certain sites.
A survey by Iranian Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports indicates that over 69 percent of the country’s youth uses proxy servers to bypass the filters and access banned internet websites.