Iran to allow useful Facebook pages

 Useful Facebook pages should be unblocked in Iran , Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Mahmoud Vaezi said, Mehr news agency reported on Nov. 12.

Vaezi went on to note that, Iran should develop a mechanism to separate safe and unsafe Facebook pages, adding that only unsafe ones should be banned.

He underlined that for the time being, separating safe and unsafe contents of web pages is technically impossible, but a working group is pursuing the issue.

Iranian Committee on Internet filtering which is related to the country's Judiciary system makes the decisions on filtering internet sites, Vaezi added.

On Nov. 5, Iranian media outlets quoted Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Ali Jannati as saying Facebook should be available for all Iranians.

He also criticised the current filtering system in Iran, saying that not only Facebook, but other social networks should be accessible in the country.

Iranian authorities banned Facebook and Twitter in the summer of 2009 when ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election victory sparked massive protests that gained momentum with the help of organisers using social media.

Alongside Facebook, Iran has blocked access to many websites including YouTube.
Most users have found ways to evade the state censors and get access to all sites via proxy tunnels and channels.

The number of Internet users in the year which ended in March 2012 reached 32.7 million in Iran. The number of GPRS users amounts to 27.5 million, accounting for 36 per cent of total Internet users in Iran as of current year.

Some 867,000 people are using high-speed Internet and about six million using the Internet via a fibre optic network.


/Trend/