Continued story of removing Iranian applications from online stores
At the same time, Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, the former Minister of Communications and Information Technology of the Twelfth Government, announced that he would legally pursue the removal of Iranian programs from Appestor. Also later, Amir Nazemi, the former head of the Information Technology Organization, referred to the legal potentials available in the international arena regarding the necessary measures to solve this problem. However, in the end, it was not announced whether legal action was taken in this regard or not, or what the results of these pursuits were.
Following the problems of Iranian platforms due to sanctions, in September of last year, new news was published about the removal of Iranian applications. The removal of Iranian applications from Google Play started with “Rubika” and later reached “Magnifier”, “Aparat”, “Filimo”, “Balad” and “Niche”. “The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology strongly condemns the unilateralism of American platforms and the unjust sanctions against the technology and cyberspace ecosystem of the country,” the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of the 13th administration, which recently took over the ministry, said in a statement. “The least reasonable response to the restriction and blocking is the development and comprehensive application of indigenous achievements in cyberspace.”
“By condemning these actions, Satra is seriously pursuing its pursuit of deleted audio and video platforms, and given that these policies are limited to audio and video,” Satra said in a statement. “Unrestricted, using the capacity of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Vice President for Legal Affairs and the National Cyberspace Center, it is pursuing an inter-agency movement to realize the rights of technology activists and the industry.” Criticizing Google’s decision, the National Cyberspace Center also announced that it will pursue this issue through international channels and will block its activities in the Iranian market if Google does not accept it and repeats it.
There have been several reasons for the removal of these applications, one of which was sanctions, and the administrators of some of these applications referred to Google’s email stating that it was not possible to use Google Play because of Article 16.5 of the Developers Rules, which states “Products “They may be subject to US export laws, sanctions and regulations and other jurisdictions.” Iran, but the latest incident of the removal of Iranian platforms showed that these unjust sanctions problems against Iranian companies continue.
Of course, there were other reasons for deleting these applications, including the fact that some users, for reasons such as creating fake accounts without permission and information on some platforms or receiving annoying SMS ads, as well as in cases of non-compliance with copyright, reported this extensively. The programs were played on Google and provided the ground for their removal. This has already happened to the unofficial versions of Farsi Telegram on Google Play for similar reasons, including non-compliance with security issues.