Two weeks before the end of the current Iranian year (year 1403), the fate of the country’s officials’ promise to lift the ban on YouTube remains unclear.
President Massoud Pezeshkian who had promised to lift the ban on all social media platforms in Iran, has so far managed to end the censorship of WhatsApp although critics say lifting the ban came hand in hand with slowing the overall Internet speed in the country.
recently, his office reported that the ban on YouTube and probably one more social media platform is likely to be lifted by the end of the Iranian year (20 March).
The other platform is said to be Telegram. Some 40 million Iranians have accounts on the platform and use it for work, messaging, and leisure.
The government also reportedly uses Telegram as one of the main outlets for spreading fake news and disinformation.
Despite the official ban, many Iranians use YouTube thanks to VPNs and political activists maintain several channels on YouTube that feature mainly political debates between activists looking for a way out of the country’s long-standing political impasse.
It is also an outlet for young Iranians’ artistic creativity. At the same time, Iranian filmmakers have been observed to use YouTube as an alternative to Iran’s strictly controlled government-owned television where they can present their movies and TV series.
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