Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 261 posts

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#41

Post by solarist »

rippercushions wrote: post #21
lagadu wrote: post #9

Wouldn't this be proof that Meta is dealing with the Iranian government directly and thus violating US sanctions against Iran?

Do we have any proof it's Meta doing this, as opposed to the Iranian government blocking Whatsapp within its borders?

https://twitter.com/roozbehp/status/1572841090910388225?s=46...

| As a former WhatsApp engineer, I don't think WhatsApp even has any mechanism to do such a thing. It's probably an unintended artifact of its infrastructure that the Iranian government has exploited, and knowing the WhatsApp team, they are probably already working on a fix.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#42

Post by snehk »

bpodgursky wrote: post #11

Google pulling out of China instead of catering to censorship was a principled move, but fairly obviously did not lead to more freedom of speech in China. It helped kickstart a domestic, government-obedient tech industry. I don't know what the right move here is. Nobody who thinks there's an obvious right answer is worth listening to.

> It helped kickstart a domestic, government-obedient tech industry.

How long do you think US companies could operate in the US if they weren't government-obedient? Or any company in any country for that matter.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#43

Post by dang »

solarist wrote: post #31

I’ve seen many tweets from people in Germany, USA, Turkey etc. that they can’t access their WhatsApp account. Seems to be both Iranian government and Meta. Edit: can be a compromised CDN. See https://twitter.com/roozbehp/status/1572841090910388225?s=46... Edit 2: Videos are being removed too https://twitter.com/youranonstory/status/1572747450368290816... Edit 3: from Cloudflare: https://blog.cloudflare.com/protests-i…

(I've moved your comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937709 to the merged thread because it's a good comment and I don't want it to get stuck where no one will see it.)

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#44

Post by n-i-m-a »

I'm an Iranian living in Italy and have an Italian phone/WhatsApp number. Couldn't call anyone or receive WhatsApp calls to/from Iranian and non-Iranian numbers yesterday afternoon when the internet blocking started in Iran. It was like all numbers somehow in touch with Iranian contacts were blocked from completing calls. As soon as either side of the call would answer, the call would end with a message like you are connected via a network that has blocked WhatsApp or something similar.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#45

Post by solarist »

dang wrote: post #43
solarist wrote: post #31

I’ve seen many tweets from people in Germany, USA, Turkey etc. that they can’t access their WhatsApp account. Seems to be both Iranian government and Meta. Edit: can be a compromised CDN. See https://twitter.com/roozbehp/status/1572841090910388225?s=46... Edit 2: Videos are being removed too https://twitter.com/youranonstory/status/1572747450368290816... Edit 3: from Cloudflare: https://blog.cloudflare.com/protests-i…

(I've moved your comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937709 to the merged thread because it's a good comment and I don't want it to get stuck where no one will see it.)

Thanks!

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#47

Post by plantain »

shadowgovt wrote: post #32
bpodgursky wrote: post #11

Google pulling out of China instead of catering to censorship was a principled move, but fairly obviously did not lead to more freedom of speech in China. It helped kickstart a domestic, government-obedient tech industry. I don't know what the right move here is. Nobody who thinks there's an obvious right answer is worth listening to.

FWIW, Google said they pulled out of China for principled reasons but they did it practically for self-preservation. Google got hacked by inside actors planted in their physical offices by the Chinese government. It's one of the very few times that Gmail's security was compromised. At the time, Google did not have the security countermeasures in place to protect against such an attack so they responded by severing th…

>Google got hacked by inside actors planted in their physical offices by the Chinese government.

This just isn't true? It was an IE 0-day.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#48

Post by dang »

lagadu wrote: post #9

Wouldn't this be proof that Meta is dealing with the Iranian government directly and thus violating US sanctions against Iran?

(This was originally a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32934936, which originally had a title implying that.)

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#50

Post by junofan »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #38
criley2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather the American people elect a government that will protect their rights through laws. Meta will not violate American law. As citizens, our most effective tool is our government of the people. The idea that we rely on culture or corporate benevolence to maintain our freedoms, and not our representatives and laws... it's insane, to the say the least. I'd prefer to elect the people to protect my freedoms, n…

It’s also viable to fight for neither capital or state dominance. You have a lot of confidence in the rule of law applying to power and liberal society

Yeah, wow, laws aren’t code that runs on people instead of silicon.
Post reply on HN