Iran unveils plan for tighter internet rules to promote local platforms

One or multiple VPNs can be found on the phones of most Iranians to navigate the heavily restricted internet landscape [Vahid Salemi/AP Photo]

Iran unveils plan for tighter internet rules to promote local platforms

Al Jazeera-Feb24th2024

By Maziar Motamedi

Tehran, Iran – A new regulatory directive from Iran’s top internet governing body shows how authorities hope to steer Iranians away from foreign platforms and turn them towards local ones.

Iran’s top internet policymaking body released a directive earlier this week that stipulates new rules with potentially wide-ranging ramifications for the country’s already constrained internet landscape, which the agency says were approved by Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei.

The Supreme Council of Cyberspace (SCC) asserted that using “refinement-breaking tools” is now “forbidden” unless the user has obtained a legal permit.

That is the new word Iranian authorities have come up with for virtual private networks (VPNs), online privacy tools that mask the user’s IP (internet protocol), which most Iranians use regularly to circumvent heavy internet restrictions.

All major social media platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Telegram, are banned in Iran along with thousands of websites, but they remain highly popular with tens of millions of users – for years prompting users to resort to circumvention tools.

Iran had made the purchase and sale of VPNs illegal in 2022, but news that using them, even without any commercial transaction involved, would also be banned prompted a backlash online.

Many pointed out that an overwhelming majority of Iranians have no choice but to use them if they wish to access the free internet, so making the use of VPNs illegal would effectively include most people in the country.

SCC Secretary Mohammad Amin Aghamiri told state television a day after the uproar that the regulations do not include the general public, and are only directed at top state entities – the office of the supreme leader, the presidency, the judiciary and the parliament, among others.

Pushing foreign platforms away

But regardless of whom the VPN ban covers, the SCC directive contains other regulations that call for large-scale changes in Iran’s internet landscape.

For one, it asks the culture ministry to collaborate with the economy and information and communications technology (ICT) ministries to come up with a plan in one month that would incentivise content creators and businesses active on foreign platforms to stay “strictly on local platforms”. The goal: to bring at least half of the target audience to local platforms within six months.

This effectively means that the SCC wants much of the content created by people inside Iran on the likes of wildly popular Instagram and YouTube to move to local platforms. It is unclear how the government expects to make this happen within months.