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As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp
61–70 of 261 posts
Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp
#62Starlink iPhones can’t come soon enough.
I'm sure repressive governments will make it illegal to use phones that can connect to Starlink. Satellite phones are banned in India, for example. You will be arrested for a lot longer for owning a satellite phone than if you owned a gun illegally.
Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp
#63I'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…
How is it possible for two non-Iranians (in a geographic/telecom sense, not ethnic sense) to lose the connection on WhatsApp due to Iranian government? Surely the blocklist isn't implemented inside Facebook, it must be based on cellphone carrier. Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937782 links to claims that the Iranian government hacked WhatsApp or one of its networking providers.
Normally the government (in this case Iran) contacts the service provider (in this case FB/Whatsapp)and lets them know that unless they self-block their service, the government will do blocking at the network level and might issue fines.
Normally, that makes the service provider implement blocks on their end, because then at least they can present the user with a sensible error message, and other services that the government isn't trying to block are not impacted (eg. services hosted on the same servers - for example Whatsapp voice calls might be banned, but text chat not banned).
Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp
#64I’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’m in Turkey currently and my father works in Moscow as an expat, yesterday we were not able to do video calls on Whatsapp and assumed it’s the Russians blocking it because the error message that Whatsapp gave was something like the operator of the person you call doesn’t support video calls. Tried Wi-Fi and mobile internet, the result was the same.
Voice calls and text worked just fine.
Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp
#65I'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…
How is it possible for two non-Iranians (in a geographic/telecom sense, not ethnic sense) to lose the connection on WhatsApp due to Iranian government? Surely the blocklist isn't implemented inside Facebook, it must be based on cellphone carrier. Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937782 links to claims that the Iranian government hacked WhatsApp or one of its networking providers.
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Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp
#66Let's hope the prosters are successful this time.
Unfortunately, they won’t be. China has been exporting some really amazing surveillance tools to Iran, NK, Russia that make revolutions basically impossible now.
When was the last successful overthrow of a despot in a middle income country? Euromaiden 2014?
Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp
#67Starlink iPhones can’t come soon enough.
I'm sure repressive governments will make it illegal to use phones that can connect to Starlink. Satellite phones are banned in India, for example. You will be arrested for a lot longer for owning a satellite phone than if you owned a gun illegally.
Let's see the governments try to ban iPhone. What a nice revolution trigger.
Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp
#68Wouldn't this be proof that Meta is dealing with the Iranian government directly and thus violating US sanctions against Iran?
Possibly. Sanctions law is a hot mess of sometimes contradictory exceptions. In this case, the exceptions regarding "informational materials" may apply. https://www.lawfareblog.com/did-twitter-violate-us-sanctions...
The Berman Amendment protects transferring information to/from Iran. Blocking information seems quite the opposite.
Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp
#69Slight OT: When I was in Monaco recently the Monaco Telecom network prevented me making or receiving WhatsApp calls. I could message, but no calling. Presumably therefore it is something that the network provider can interfere with effectively.
Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure repressive governments will make it illegal to use phones that can connect to Starlink. Satellite phones are banned in India, for example. You will be arrested for a lot longer for owning a satellite phone than if you owned a gun illegally.
Let's see the governments try to ban iPhone. What a nice revolution trigger.
Most Iranians can't afford iPhones.