June 22, 2018
A new study on the impact of the ban on Telegram, the secure communications app, says the people hurt the most by the government’s action are its own supporters, people who have become dependent on Telegram in recent years but who don’t use illegal tools to get around censorship because they haven’t cared about getting around censorship.
It is believed that 40 million of Iran’s 80 million people are users of Telegram. For many people Telegram has replaced email and even the telephone for keeping in touch. For many it is the main access to the Internet.
So the ban that was imposed on Telegram May 1 is devastating for many people in Iran.
The report was issued June 18 by the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). The 42-page English-language report is entitled, “Closing of the Gates: Implications of Iran’s Ban on the Telegram Messaging App.”
The report suggests that President Rohani may not truly be as opposed to such censorship as he has long claimed. “The action his administration did take in the wake of the ban—the disruption by his Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) of access to circumvention tools that Iranians are using to bypass the ban and maintain access to Telegram—suggests that Rohani’s verbal support for Internet freedom is just that, only verbal,” the report says.
The report discusses not just the impact on information exchange but the impact on business and the economy. It says the ban “will make business transactions more difficult, especially for small and medium-sized companies that use the app for everything from advertising to sales, negatively impacting employment and incomes. This is especially true for those at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum who may not have the financial resources or technical know-how to use circumvention tools.
“This segment of the population, traditionally supportive of the regime, has already registered unprecedented levels of discontent with the state over economic conditions in the protests that erupted in December 2017. Yet it is this segment that will be hit hardest by the ban.”
Telegram was launched in 2013 by Russian-born brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov. The Russian government did not approve of it and Telegram has since moved to Dubai. Telegram quickly gained favor in Iran, dwarfing the number of users of other social media networks. Easy to use, fast, accessible to Farsi, and with text, voice, video and phone capabilities, as well as channels that allow messages to be broadcast to large audiences, use of the messaging app spread rapidly across Iran.
Farid, a 42-year-old social worker in Tehran, told the report’s authors, “I’m a community organizer with several associations and 90 percent of our communications are done on Telegram. Our friends coordinate their parties, weddings and funerals on Telegram. Even our community mosque uses it to organize their activities.”
And even government workers and state-owned organizations have become dependent upon the app for daily transactions. Ahmad, a 39-year-old government employee, said, “Email is not widely used. But with Telegram, email has become irrelevant. We send files, reports, letters and office communications through Telegram.
“When Telegram was blocked in January, it created serious problems for us. Sometimes the ministerial offices could not send letters because of problems with installing circumvention tools. Eventually, they had to be delivered by hand until one of our guys installed circumvention tools for the entire division.”
Prior to the ban, it was estimated that 40 percent to 60 percent of Iran’s bandwidth was occupied by Telegram (with the higher number cited by Iranian state officials), meaning that more than half the Internet traffic in Iran was on this messaging app.
The report notes that the regime’s ban is not very solid. It can be evaded by repeatedly renewing Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and other circumvention tools. But “this endless cat-and-mouse game makes the use of such tools more onerous and time consuming. Numerous inter-viewees expressed to CHRI frustrations over the inconvenience of needing to constantly find a new VPN to use.”
Mitra, a 36-year-old computer programmer in Tehran, said, “These days connecting to Telegram is a struggle. Since Telegram was filtered, the Internet has slowed and circumvention tools stop working after a few days and you’re forced to search for new ones. Even when a tool works, the connection speed is bad.”
As the Iran Times reported several weeks ago, state officials acknowledged that during the brief shutdown of Telegram during the protests late in December and early in January, three-quarters of Telegram’s users in Iran continued to access the app via VPNs.
After the total ban was implemented May 1, there was an initial drop-off in Telegram use, especially once the ICT Ministry’s efforts to block access to circumvention tools got underway. But since then, the number of Telegram users in Iran has reportedly begun to rise again, the report said, noting that even ICT Minister Mohammad-Javad Azari-Jahromi posted a chart May 18 showing a huge drop in the number of Iranian users after the ban was first imposed, but with the numbers approaching pre-ban levels within just two weeks.
But the report says, “Yet some in Iran will lose access to Telegram, and these will be the people who do not have the financial resources or technological sophistication to use VPNs and other circumvention tools. Many Iranians in lower socio-economic brackets cannot afford household Internet, but they do have mobile phones and access the Internet this way. Their Telegram accounts are not only used for the group chats that have become ubiquitous among Iranians in which family news and photos are shared—they are also used for the second jobs and to run the small businesses in the informal sector that are increasingly critical for this demographic.”
The report forecasts: “The Telegram ban … will likely fuel further discontent.”
It concludes: “Those most hurt are usually those least well off. With this decision, the Islamic Republic risks losing further support from the very constituency that has long comprised its base. It is ironic that these are the very people the state likely sought to win back via intensified censorship. Yet in closing them off from (open) information, they have also barred them from needed economic opportunities in Iran’s increasingly struggling economy. Moreover, the authorities have presented themselves as indifferent to the needs, hardships and realities of daily life for vast numbers of people in Iran. This will not bolster support for the state.”