Instagram and WhatsApp will definitely be filtered

According to the clauses and comments in the plan to protect the rights of users in cyberspace, Instagram and WhatsApp will definitely be filtered soon.

Recently, the plan to protect the rights of users in cyberspace went to the parliament and was approved by a majority of votes of the deputies, and was submitted to the special commission for further investigation. With the release of the draft plan, there was a lot of criticism from experts and users, and there were many concerns about internet restrictions and filtering of social networks such as Instagram and WhatsApp.

Despite the fact that the proponents of the protection plan say that no program should be blocked, but as the evidence shows, we should wait for the filtering of Instagram, WhatsApp and similar programs soon. Fallahi, a member of parliament who supports the plan, said that none of the social networks will be filtered and that there is no mention of filtering or blocking anywhere in the plan. But Nouri, another member of parliament, says Article 27 (c) of the final draft explicitly mentions a block. According to Nouri, Note 2 of Article 28 states that foreign platforms will be blocked after four months if they fail to meet the required obligations.

Notes for filtering Instagram and WhatsApp

Also, looking at the draft plan for the protection of cyberspace, we come to the conclusion that the claim of the proponents of this plan that social networks are not blocked is not true. The plan states that basic application services must be licensed to operate. Following this clause in the protection plan, there will certainly be a closed-door bargaining process between the basic technical service providers and the licensing commission, and the licensing commission will become a place for rent distribution. At the same time, it is very unlikely that Instagram and WhatsApp will sit at the negotiating table with Iran.

Determining the traffic ceiling of foreign services by the relevant commission is one of the other notes of this plan. This makes it virtually impossible to use external media or social networks such as Instagram and WhatsApp due to the slowdown as the traffic ceiling for foreign services is lowered. In this way, the commission makes access to these services impossible without paying political, social and economic costs and only by slowing down users’ use. We have seen an example of this before in the case of Viber Messenger, where users were forced to restrict their use due to disruptions and slow speeds.

This commission can also filter Instagram due to the existence of a similar internal sample. Interestingly, the determination of the suitability of the internal service is only with this commission and no clear criteria have been stated for it. In this way, WhatsApp Messenger will soon be filtered because it has internal equations such as Soroush, Yes and..

Therefore, although the proponents of the plan to protect the rights of users in cyberspace say that social networks and foreign media are not going to be filtered, but there are so many clauses and comments in this plan that show that in the near future nothing but filtering Instagram, WhatsApp and apps External similarity will not occur.