Iran 'throttling' internet to limit protest footage: activists
Iran is imposing increasingly severe restrictions on access to the internet, albeit still short of a total shutdown, in an apparent bid to limit the sharing of footage of protests which have erupted nationwide, activists charge.
Campaigners and Persian-language television channels outside Iran have noted a reduction in the posting of footage of the protests filmed on mobile phones, almost two weeks into the movement that erupted following the death of Mahsa Amini.
The authorities have already restricted access to Instagram and WhatsApp -- until now the last remaining unfiltered social media services -- and have now clamped down on apps like the Google Play Store as well as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) that seek to circumvent local access restrictions.
"It's still not an internet shutdown, and it's hard to even describe what they are doing to the network as 'shutdowns'. Perhaps extreme throttling is the best simple term for it," said the Iran researcher for freedom of expression group Article 19, Mahsa Alimardani.
"But the disruptions are heavy," she told AFP, saying disconnections were hitting a peak from late afternoon to midnight when most protests take place.
The restrictions still fall short of the total shutdown seen in November 2019 when a crackdown on less than a week of protests, according to Amnesty International, left at least 321 people dead.
Videos of protests and alleged abuses by the authorities are still filtering out onto social media channels, but not in the same volume as when protests first erupted following the death of Amini who had been arrested by the morality police.
"The authorities seem to have learned how dangerous this is for their economy or overall public relations," commented Alimardani. -
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