Iran and Facebook

There is an interesting tale of the difference between people who view the Internet as a good thing and ones who think of it as an opportunity for repression.   Today's Wall Street Journal has an open letter from Marlam Memarsadeghi and Akbar Atri to Mark Zuckerberg about Iran's use of the Internet.  [Facebook, Please Don't Let the Mullahs Troll Us, 25 November]

They say the run a Persian-language Facebook page for Tavaana, a "civil-society empowerment initiative" giving voice to people and educating on social action and human rights violations.  These are both tough subjects to address in any repressive regime, and they probably can understand if the government doesn't welcome it.  Iran has been on top of its game in this area for some time, as has China, Russia, Syria, and several others.  Because we favor an open Internet, we occasionally think the rest of the world does too.

These two are telling Facebook that their own policies are being abused by their government.  It isn't hard to do.  They claim "trolls" have called some of the pages they post morally objectionable.  This is not the first time for Facebook, since the Russians and Chinese do the same thing Iran is accused of here.

This is an area of Information War that we ignore.  The Russians have ask both Facebook and Twitter to close accounts of "subversives",  and they get to say who that might be.  How subversive they are is always a matter of opinion, but this is not world opinion we are talking about here.  If Iranian people write in to Facebook and say that picture of the Amistad slave rebellion I posted is objectionable in their country, Facebook or Twitter has to think about it.  If they make the wrong decision, they might have to worry about becoming "subversive" themselves.  They won't be operating if they do.

They might do well to see how the Chinese get around an army of censors, from people monitoring the national press to local party officials who look for things more innocuous.  They have an elaborate system of codes and taking advantage of a complex language.  Yes, it can be dangerous, but Mark Zuckerberg is not going to be able to do much to help them in a country where opening the wrong kind of website can land a person in jail.

Not every country sees the Internet as a good thing, and it is dangerous for us to see them as wanting to be good neighbors on the electronic highways.  These are the same guys who ran denial of service attacks against some of our biggest banks.  We have to teach their citizens to survive in a hostile environment that we take for granted.