People in Iran send 15 billion messages every day through Telegram, the most popular social media app in the country and 45 million people are registered as members, the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) said on Saturday.
Telegram, like Facebook and You Tube, is blocked by the authorities and people have to use VPNs and other circumvention tools to get access to the app. Almost every Iranian uses a circumvention method to gain unrestricted access to the Internet, although the connection speed is usually slow.
Since the use of the internet became popular in the 2000s in Iran, the government began blocking thousands of websites both for political and religious reasons. There is a huge bureaucracy to control access and create barriers to access.
SCI also said 55 million people or 65 percent of Iran’s 85 million people use social media apps.
Among social media apps, Whatsapp and Instagram are also very popular with 88.5 and 68 percent of users respectively having accounts on these two platforms.
The government has spent tens of millions of dollars to create domestic messaging apps to help reduce the use of foreign platforms it cannot control, but people weary of government eavesdropping have refused to migrate to its apps.
School teachers across Iran held protests on Saturday demanding an improvement in their work conditions, as workers in natural gas and petrochemical sectors protested for their wages in southern Iran.
Teachers held rallies in Esfahan, Fars, Alborz, Ilam,...
Read Full Story: https://iranintl.com/en/iran-in-brief/foreign-social-media-apps-remain-highly-popular-iran-despite-blocking
Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.