> Both of these would only serve to amplify the power of Iranian government many fold. And there is no "maybe" and no "time to time". We're talking the de-facto

> Both of these would only serve to amplify the power of Iranian government many fold. And there is no "maybe" and no "time to time". We're talking the de-facto tools of surveillance capitalism here. I'm not so sure they would be equal. Example: Iranians have been using Telegram/Whatsapp/Viber for many years. And every few years the government tries to block them and push their own "national" app. Every time they try to push this agenda, there is a massive massive backlash, because noone trusts the government. Maybe Iranian government would have enough leverage against Facebook/Google to ask them to do something (like removing Navalny app) at key moments (or push to surveil some key people at certain moments) but they definitely wont have access to every single person's database like a "national" app would. That's a very big difference.