MESSAGE
| DATE | 2021-05-01 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] The Standard of Care in Irarian and Totalitarian
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Iran Floods Clubhouse to Drown Out Debate
Sune Engel Rasmussen and Aresu Eqbali
9-12 minutes
TEHRAN—Authoritarian rulers have clamped down on dissidents trying to
organize online in recent years, with some attempting to emulate the
firewall that insulates China’s homegrown web from the world outside.
Iran has taken a different approach. Knowing its filters aren’t enough
to keep Iranians off global social-media platforms, it floods them with
propaganda, aiming to turn them to its advantage.
The latest is Clubhouse. Activists complain that Iranian authorities are
co-opting the app to create a facade of democracy ahead of presidential
elections in June to boost voter turnout, which the state has often used
as a badge of legitimacy.
In recent weeks, Iranians have gravitated to Clubhouse to discuss
everything from human-rights abuses in the Islamic Republic to cultural
issues and boycotting the elections. Launched last year, the audio-based
app offers users a way to gather in virtual “rooms” where anyone can
join townhall-style debates.
It would seem to be the kind of platform that would unsettle many
authoritarian leaders. But while other Middle Eastern governments moved
to block it, Iran leaned in.
One recent evening, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif fielded questions until
1 a.m., drawing a maximum capacity of 8,000 listeners. Iran’s nuclear
chief, its central bank governor and even military commanders have taken
part in their own debates, too.
At first, the discussions seemed unusually frank by Iranian standards.
“In other social networks which are based on writing, people can edit
what they say,” said Farid Naderi, a 33-year-old civil engineer in
Tehran who said he spends three to four hours a day on Clubhouse. “But
in Clubhouse, individuals speak spontaneously,” he said. “The truth is
naked and transparent in Clubhouse.”
However, participants soon found familiar red lines even on Clubhouse.
When Omid Memarian, a U.S.-based Iranian journalist, challenged a senior
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander and presidential candidate,
Rostam Qasemi, about the killing of hundreds of street protesters in
2019, Mr. Memarian was cut off by the moderators in Tehran who had
organized the discussion.
“They said I had radical ideas, and that I shouldn’t be allowed to ask
these questions,” said Mr. Memarian, who is also communications director
at Democracy for the Arab World Now, a non-profit.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif fielded questions on Clubhouse
recently.
Photo: Vahid Salemi/Associated Press
Mr. Zarif’s townhall wasn’t as free as it initially appeared, either.
The organizers later told Clubhouse users that the foreign minister had
said he wouldn’t accept questions from foreign-based Persian-language
media outlets, which often criticize Iran’s leadership.
Negin Shiraghaei, a former presenter with the British Broadcasting Corp.
who organizes activists on Clubhouse, said Iranian authorities seek to
uphold the same rules on Clubhouse as they do in the Islamic Republic.
“They are creating an image,” she said. “In Iran, at meetings with the
Supreme Leader, some people are allowed to ask ‘critical questions’ to
make it seem like there is dialogue.”
The organizer of the debate with Mr. Zarif, Tehran-based journalist
Farid Modarresi, said he had to follow the rules of the Iranian state,
even online.
“If you work in a country, you respect its rules. I don’t disregard
their criticism and don’t reject what they say in an absolute way,” Mr.
Modarresi said about his critics abroad. “But those outside Iran expect
too much from us.”
Clubhouse didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces Explained in Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces
Your browser does not support HTML5 video.
0:00 / 7:11
5:03
Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces Explained in Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces
Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces Explained in Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces
Audio-only social-media venues are all the rage right now. How does it
all work and what’s there to listen to? WSJ’s Joanna Stern went inside
Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces to talk to the people there to find out.
Photo illustration: Kenny Wassus for The Wall Street Journal
Iran’s approach to Clubhouse follows a tested-and-tried playbook, said
Mahsa Alimardani, who has researched Iran’s approach to social media at
the University of Oxford’s Oxford Internet. She said Tehran responded to
the rise of the Telegram messaging app by first blocking it and then
swamping it with pro-Islamic Republic messaging. Some of the most
followed Iranian accounts on Telegram are run by the Revolutionary
Guards, the premier wing of Iran’s military, or hard-line state media
outlets, fulminating on topics such as the U.S.’s involvement in the
Middle East or the supposed threat from Israel.
“As Telegram evolved, the Islamic Republic didn’t have control over the
app, but it did a lot to control the information space,” said Ms.
Alimardani.
When one of the most prominent women’s-rights activists living in Iran,
Faezeh Rafsanjani, filled a Clubhouse room to capacity within minutes,
she clashed with the moderator who kept interrupting her. Ms.
Rafsanjani, the daughter of a former president, said she no longer
believed in a religious government and encouraged Iranians to boycott
the coming elections. The moderator said he didn’t want to get arrested
for allowing her to speak.
Omid Memarian, U.S.-based Iranian journalist, was recently cut off by
moderators in a debate on Clubhouse.
Photo: Patrick McMullan/PMC
Many Iranian users have recently been unable to access the app after
some of the country’s cellphone operators blocked it. But
pro-establishment figures daily use the platform to promote Iran’s
Islamic systemm including conservative presidential candidates.
Mohammad Mousazadeh, a popular qari, or a skilled reciter of the Quran,
who is affiliated with a hard-line political faction, has racked up
7,600 followers. Iran’s minister of information and communications
technology, Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi, often pops up on the platform
to voice his opinion on a given topic, sometimes while stuck in traffic
in Tehran.
The Iranian parliament this week added over $70 million to a budget
proposed by the government including allocations for what was described
as the state broadcaster’s “cyber operatives.”
Iran’s social-media tactics represent a novel method of policing the
internet on the cheap.
Other countries try to emulate China’s firewall through blunt force. In
Vietnam, a 10,000-strong cyber unit called Force 47 patrols the web, and
a 2018 law grants authorities enhanced authority to inspect computer
systems. Dissidents arrested and charged with the crime of spreading
propaganda against the state, as the Vietnamese authorities call it, can
expect to be sentenced to years in prison.
Cambodia in February passed rules requiring all internet traffic in the
country to route through a regulatory body that monitors online activity
before it reaches users. Myanmar’s leaders have periodically cut mobile
internet access during protests against this year’s coup, but have also
followed Iran’s lead by flooding Facebook with disinformation.
U.S.-based think tank Freedom House estimates some 700 military
personnel are involved in the operation.
Iran also blocks the internet during unrest, and imposed a near-blackout
during protests in late 2019. It has developed its own walled-off
internet, with limited success, and recently signed an economic pact
with China that includes the exchange of cybersecurity technology.
“It is very important for us to be able to establish control over our
cyberspace with the help of China,” lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian told the
semiofficial Mehr News Agency after the agreement was signed.
Virtual private networks and proxies to circumvent state filtering in
Iran are illegal but widely available and the big social-media sites are
widely used. Even Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office uses Twitter.
Despite the risks and limitations, free-speech advocates maintain there
still are upsides to Clubhouse.
“Not being able to communicate and speak about our problems has been
always a worry,” said Mr. Naderi in Tehran. “Now we can have a dialogue.”
There is also some satisfaction in being able to confront Iran’s rulers,
at least temporarily.
“I went to jail for my writings in Iran,” said Mr. Memarian, the
journalist who asked about the killings of protesters. “It felt good to
tell a senior member of the Revolutionary Guard that he was responsible
for repression.”
Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen-at-wsj.com
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