This morning I’ve been receiving numerous reports that Iran has blocked Facebook. After doing a little searching around I found an article stating that it was blocked “to prevent supporters of the leading opposition candidate from using the site for his campaign.” Mir Hossein Mousavi has attracted over 5,200 supporters on the site. While it’s far from a majority of voters, it was clearly the beginning of a movement that the Ahmadinejad regime was not a fan of.
This isn’t the first time that Iran has blocked Facebook. In 2006 the site was banned for being “illegal” but in February of this year the site was unblocked again. Facebook had become the 10th most popular site in Iran according to Radio Free Europe. Political activists in Iran have become heavily active on the site, which is exactly the concern of the current regime. Less than six months later the site is back down and while many users expect the site to return after the election, many Iranians are more than a bit frustrated.
As one commenter posted on my profile wall this morning, using proper internet linguistics, “nick 
facebook now filtered enjoy facebook with out us “. As the Radio Free America article suggested back in March, “many people don’t expect the Facebook access will be permanent.” Those speculators turned out to be correct and now the site is down and any hopes of a movement within Iran, sparked by Facebook activity is hopeless for the time being.
While Facebook’s latest of service technically blocks Iran from using the site, the company has publicly stated that they have no intention of blocking Iranian users. As a Facebook spokesman stated, “We have allowed, and plan to continue to allow, users to set up accounts from those countries and communicate, as long as they are not engaging in commercial activities on the sites.”
Unfortunately for the Iranians, they have a regime in place that doesn’t support freedom of speech and would prefer to run a dictatorship. Hopefully the citizens eventually get access to Facebook granted to them.
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*sigh*
Comment by Facebook User — May 23, 2009 @ 10:20 am
Iran's blocking of the facebook site is a perfect opportunity for Facebook clients like the ones from Microsoft and Seesmic to get vast amount of users very rapidly.
Comment by David Haddad — May 23, 2009 @ 10:40 am
thanks nick for this article
Comment by Nariman Gharib — May 23, 2009 @ 11:35 am
thanks for your support from Tehran/Iran.
and by the way it's not a great opportunity for anyother service in iran beacuse the goverment simply block all the social networking services.
Comment by Reza — May 23, 2009 @ 5:04 pm
People are really frustrated here in Iran, they are looking for VPNs and Filter-Remover softwares everywhere, help the people if you know any free VPN. this is a total dictatorship here in Iran, where they don't even let people know their candida, where they don't let the other candidates to advertise! hope for us to be able to get this bastard president of ours out of the office soon. if we catch a win, it will be a really precious win under these conditions & heavy censorship.
Comment by Amirreza — May 23, 2009 @ 5:09 pm
In my Facebook friend list, people are using this network for showing up their latest pictures along with the greatest background possing like a model. So I fucked up since nobody there cares of what I have wrote on my wall, even they didn't reply for each comments I have sent.
"Yawwwn…" – fed up with FB.
Comment by FacebookJerk — May 23, 2009 @ 6:25 pm
thank you for show our problem, but please help us to solve this problem in iran.
Comment by pedram — May 23, 2009 @ 10:38 pm
Proxy time..
Comment by Yatti — May 24, 2009 @ 2:23 am
the only reason that I quit facebook was that I was sure F.B will be blocked in near future. before FB, orkut was very popular social network among Iranian. when it was filtered it lost Iranian user inside and facebook absorbed the Iranian outside of iran. orkut is now a ghost town here!
Hopefully it will be free after election.
Comment by Dr. faust — May 24, 2009 @ 6:34 am
Oh… my God..!
Comment by Husein Hashem Djayan — May 24, 2009 @ 7:08 pm
We want our facebook …
Comment by --- — May 24, 2009 @ 10:07 pm
Who says Iran is blocking? This is Facebook blocking Iran…. Check the terms & conditions and you will see it!
Comment by Mike — May 25, 2009 @ 1:41 am
TODAY IRAN UNBLOCK FACEBOOK.COM
Comment by Nariman Gharib — May 26, 2009 @ 9:18 am
our government is our shame, i'm sure u can find a way to return facebook for us.please help us.we need revolution NOW !!!!
Comment by mahtab — June 14, 2009 @ 12:28 am
hi i'm from iran facebook was blocked before the election and it got opened but now after election they blocked it again it's so bad.
Comment by charlotte — June 15, 2009 @ 5:14 am
please guide me,how can i get into Facebook in iran when it is filtered?
Comment by nina — June 20, 2009 @ 6:56 am
The world must help Iranian people.
Comment by Mohammad — June 21, 2009 @ 11:59 pm
no one helped
its 5 month after election and what happened? who helped?
nothing
they are continuing to murder us and no one says anything
shame on human being
shame on us
just seeing ourselves
Comment by hoda — December 4, 2009 @ 10:37 am