Iran vs the World Wide Web
The
Islamic republic’s blocking of popular social media websites has helped
indigenously developed services flourish
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi visited Iran recently to discuss bilateral ties. And
with economic relations set to improve in the coming days, there seems to be
much to look forward to.
Coincidentally,
I was in Iran around the same time and realised that while one is in Iran, one
may not be seamlessly connected to the Internet. The use of social media
platforms is not permitted.
Yet,
while people and businesses are not globally connected online, they are well
connected within the country. With a literacy rate of 93%, mobile penetration
is at 120%, Internet penetration is at 73%, and 40% of the content is hosted
within the country.
I
always thought India is a country of paradoxes. But after visiting Iran, I feel
the latter is even more paradoxical. I can easily say that not many people
across the world truly know what Iran is all about. This is largely because
people around the globe have only heard about Iran through the international
media, which heavily leans towards stories that highlight fundamentalism, its
orthodox nature, its militaristic perspective and its uncertain future.
What
makes matters worse is Iran’s isolation from the world of social media.
International media is our only source of information on the country.
I
had no information about Iran when I headed to its capital, Tehran, to speak at
a conference organized by Crowd-sourcing Week in collaboration with a local
partner called EventBox. My air ticket was arranged without hassle but my room
could not be booked as the person who was arranging the accommodation was an
American citizen, and his credit and debit cards weren’t accepted. Finally, I
booked the accommodation using my credit card through a Tehran-based travel
agency that sent me a special link to make the payment. Later, I learnt that
the company was registered in Europe; had it not been, I would not have been
able to make a booking as international money transactions are an issue.
I
reached Tehran via Muscat on an Oman Air flight which was more than half empty.
I gathered that not many people travel to Iran. The immigration process was
easy and the woman at the counter seemed to be more than happy to welcome an
Indian.
Iran
welcomed me without any provision for Wi-Fi or Internet at Tehran airport. At
the hotel though, there was Wi-Fi, no social media sites were accessible. In
Iran, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked but the hotel receptionist
smiled and introduced me to an app that allowed me to bypass the blocks. The
app was a VPN (Virtual Private Network).
Sara
Mohammadi, founder of EventBox, who divides her time between Tehran and Dubai,
had managed to bring many Internet and new media entrepreneurs and start-ups
from the country to the conference. I was quite surprised to see that 50% of
the delegates were women, including students, researchers, entrepreneurs and
executives.
I
learnt from my conversations with the locals that for everything “big” on the
Internet, Iran had an alternative developed locally. For example, for Facebook,
it has Cloob; for YouTube, Aparat; for Google Analytics, Webgozar. Similarly,
for eBay, they have Esam; for Amazon, Digikala; for Kindle, Fidibo; for Google
Play Store, Café Bazaar; and for PayPal, ZarinPal. ShopFa is their local
Shopify; and 2nate and Hamijoo are their indigenous crowd-funding platforms.
While
many believe that years of economic sanctions have hurt Iran, it has, in fact,
exponentially flourished in the area of entrepreneurship despite the sanctions,
blocked websites and partial access to the Internet.
A
report by Al-Monitor, an online news website based in Iran, says there is a
belief that blocking of the Internet has actually helped Iran and its youth
develop better indigenous tech innovations. Fewer than 10 of the 100 most
popular websites in Iran are hosted outside the country. Iran has indexed more
than one billion pages under its home-grown search engine Parsijoo, which is a
perfect replacement for the popular Google.
While
the start-up community in Iran is seemingly satisfied with opportunities
available, the general public, especially the youth, are not very happy with
sanctions or the blocking of websites. Having said that, they all use plug-ins
and proxy websites to bypass the blocks. In fact, organisers of the conference
had the Twitter hashtag for the day on display; no less than a 100 tweets must
have gone out from the smartphones of delegates in that auditorium.
Iran
is working very hard to develop its own National Internet Project (akin to
developing its own Internet) to replace the World Wide Web. While Iran teaches
us how to strengthen Internet penetration within a country, I believe we must
also simultaneously understand that we don’t need to block the Internet to
create a rich domestic Internet.
Source | Mint – The Wall Street Journal | 8 June 2016
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan
& Co
Best
Paper Award | Received the Best Paper Award at TIFR-BOSLA National Conference on
Future Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) on April 23,
2016. The title of the paper is “Removing
Barriers to Literacy: Marrakesh VIP Treaty”
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