{"id":1059,"date":"2013-09-18T16:15:16","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T20:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/?p=1059"},"modified":"2013-09-18T16:15:16","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T20:15:16","slug":"iran-accidentally-allows-access-to-facebook-twitter-for-24-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/2013\/09\/18\/iran-accidentally-allows-access-to-facebook-twitter-for-24-hours\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Accidentally Allows Access to Facebook, Twitter for 24 Hours"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Monday, Internet users in Iran noticed that they could <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/09\/17\/world\/middleeast\/iran-facebook-twitter-access.html?_r=0\">access Facebook and Twitter<\/a>&mdash;the first time the social media sites have been viewable in the country since 2009. Despite the block, Iranians can normally access the sites using a VPN, but Twitter and Facebook users <a href=\"http:\/\/qz.com\/124913\/iran-opens-up-access-to-twitter-and-facebook-for-the-first-time-since-2009\/\">reported<\/a> that the sites were suddenly freely accessible.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, this access disappeared.<\/p>\n<p>Abdolsamad Khoramabadi, who leads Iran&#8217;s filtering and monitoring committee, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlanticwire.com\/technology\/2013\/09\/facebook-and-twitter-access-iran-just-glitch-now\/69485\/\">blamed<\/a> the sites&#8217; temporary accessibility on &#8220;technical problems&#8221;&mdash;in other words, it was an accident.  Some are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/09\/18\/world\/middleeast\/facebook-and-twitter-blocked-again-in-iran-after-respite.html?pagewanted=all\">claiming<\/a> that the unblocking was a test to see how citizens would respond, perhaps as the beginning of a greater easing of Internet restrictions in Iran, but Khoramabadi has declared that his office is conducting an investigation to determine who is responsible for the glitch, suggesting that it wasn&#8217;t entirely government-sanctioned.<\/p>\n<p>For now, Iranians are back to using VPNs&mdash;many of which have been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.co.uk\/news\/archive\/2013-03\/11\/iran-vpn-block\">targeted by censorship officials<\/a>&mdash;to post tweets and status updates. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iranian Twitter and Facebook users had unfettered access to the sites for roughly 24 hours earlier this week, the result of what censorship officials in the country are calling a technical error. <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/2013\/09\/18\/iran-accidentally-allows-access-to-facebook-twitter-for-24-hours\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2444,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3687,622],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-iran"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4L9BV-h5","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2444"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1063,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions\/1063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}