Earlier today, the entire WordPress.com domain got filtered in Iran. It means a large number of Farsi blogs hosted on WordPress are inaccessible in Iran. It is not clear whether this filtering decision will be permanent.  Blogspot.com (Blogger), Google’s blogging platform, was also filtered while ago but the blockage was lifted after a few days. Since then, it gets filtered periodically.

It seems Iranian authorities are trying to frustrate Iranian bloggers by blocking and tampering international blogging platforms so they migrate to internal providers like BlogFa.com and PersianBlog.ir, where it is easier to exert more control. By  law, blogging providers are responsible for any content appears on their platforms and they have to remove any “unlawful” content immediately. This way the Iran censors can take a backseat in running the censorship machine, while the “private sector” will do the job, in order to hold on their permits and not end up in jail (the owners of both BlogFa and PersianBlog were arrested after the election).

A similar policy was executed briefly on emails by filtering Gmail and announcing a ‘National Email Platform’. However, the policy failed as the national email platform never made it into reality and Gmail was unblokced after a while.  But the policy of “Frustrate Bloggers to use Internal Providers” stands a better chance as there are good internal alternatives and they are popular.

The 12th of June is the anniversary of the disputed Iranian presidential election.  In an article for Index on Censorship, I revisited the “Twitter Revolution” and pointed out some lessons learned for the future. I argued that It is time to replace the Twitter revolution with small media discourse.

On Invite of International Media Supprt (IMS), the main Danish media development NGO, I attended a debate on Social media and democracy in closed societies and challenged some widely accepted assumptions, including the “Twitter Revolution”. Interestingly, Information, a Danish daily, choose a title for my interview, that Google translates it to “Twitter Revolution was a Duck”!