{"id":2004,"date":"2009-03-17T23:02:25","date_gmt":"2009-03-18T07:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=2004"},"modified":"2009-03-17T23:02:25","modified_gmt":"2009-03-18T07:02:25","slug":"radio-free-europe-why-did-iran-unblock-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/17\/radio-free-europe-why-did-iran-unblock-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Radio Free Europe: Why Did Iran Unblock Facebook?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rferl.org\/content\/Why_Did_Iran_Unblock_Facebook\/1510005.html\"><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/gdb.rferl.org\/23EB8293-09F3-41F7-A6BC-6E6D6DB886F2_w393_s.jpg\"\/><\/center><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rferl.org\/content\/Why_Did_Iran_Unblock_Facebook\/1510005.html\">Radio Free Europe<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>March 14, 2009<br \/>\nBy Golnaz Esfandiari<\/p>\n<p>Farid Hashemi\u2019s latest &#8220;status update&#8221; on his Facebook page says a lot about his state of mind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s better to be born as a dog in a democracy than to be a human in a dictatorship,\u201d he writes. <\/p>\n<p>Twenty-eight-year-old Hashemi is a senior member of Iran\u2019s largest pro-reform student group, Daftar Tahkim Vahdat, which is a regular target of pressure from the state. <\/p>\n<p>He is also one of the thousands of Iranians who use Facebook to stay in touch with friends, share photos, and exchange views and information. <\/p>\n<p>Iranian authorities blocked the popular social networking site in 2006 as &#8220;illegal.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>But in February, officials in Tehran took the surprising step of unblocking Facebook. Since then, the site&#8217;s Iranian membership has been growing fast. Facebook is now the 10th most popular website in Iran. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Update: Farid Pouya <a href=\"http:\/\/globalvoicesonline.org\/2009\/02\/07\/iran-you-tube-and-face-book-are-not-filtered-anymore\/\">reminds<\/a> me that last month, YouTube was also suddenly unblocked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Radio Free Europe: March 14, 2009 By Golnaz Esfandiari Farid Hashemi\u2019s latest &#8220;status update&#8221; on his Facebook page says a lot about his state of mind. \u201cIt\u2019s better to be born as a dog in a democracy than to be a human in a dictatorship,\u201d he writes. Twenty-eight-year-old Hashemi is a senior member of Iran\u2019s largest pro-reform student group, Daftar Tahkim Vahdat, which is a regular target of pressure from the state. He is also one of the thousands of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-iran","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-wk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}