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Many WhatsApp accounts with Iranian numbers are disabled, even outside of Iran

133 points by nasir 4y ago

miduil 4y ago
Honestly it show's how much of marketing stunt/performance this is for Signal. Literally ever since they've released the proxy configuration - no pull requests were accepted, Issues can't be opened and no updates were published. If they want to have people deploy proxies, they should at least make sure that who deploys them is doing this in a safe fashion for everyone involved.
amadeuspagel 4y ago
If only there was some principle that WhatsApp could abide by, rather then being torn between different governments, pressure groups ...
- nasir 4y ago
  This possibly explains why WhatsApp and Instagram were not blocked in Iran similar to Telegram. There seems to be a deal between Meta and the the government of Iran.
  - runnerup 4y ago
    I'd wonder if that violates any sanctions.
    - psuresh 4y ago
      Sanctions are joke nowadays. Every country tweak it to its needs.
- pid-1 4y ago
  Why would Whatsapp have any principles besides following local laws? It's just trouble with no business gains.
  - amadeuspagel 4y ago
    As this example shows, following local laws can itself mean trouble.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Why would any business have any principles besides following local laws? Local laws change. Facebook’s sociopathic culture has put it at a material disadvantage when it comes to public opinion and merger/regulatory approvals. If that spills into judgement of its employees, it could turn into a recruiting problem.
    - pid-1 4y ago
      I see where your are coming from, but I'm not convinced the alternatives are any better. The moment Meta fails to follow any local law, policimakers all over the world will scratch their heads and think about how that could happen in their own juridictions. There will be consequences. Moreover, most countries in the world regulate speech in many ways. I don't see why Meta should bear the responsibility of being the global free speech police when local citizens themselves were not keen at fighting this battle.
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > moment Meta fails to follow any local law Meta has a thorough history of selectively following local laws. > don't see why Meta should bear the responsibility of being the global free speech police They don't. They have a duty to not undermining American interests overseas. If they need active lawmaking to tell them when they are and are not doing that, Congress will create a permanent regulator for them.
  - beardyw 4y ago
    Reputation. Ignore it at your peril.
j3th9n 4y ago
What would the incentive be for Meta?
- agilob 4y ago
  Meta will do evil things for free.
- netsharc 4y ago
  Maybe it's someone wearing the compliance suit noticing (due to Iranian protesters) that, "Wait a minute, these are Iranians, and we're not allowed to do business with them!" (is that the text of the sanctions law, or maybe it's a compliance suit-wearer's overly cautious interpretation of it?). The suit-wearer might prefer to be compliant with the US law rather than help the revolutionaries...
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  I would guess that the Iranian government ordered them to do this.
eqvinox 4y ago
The HN summary line is very confusing (for me), from reading "between accounts from Iran" I was astounded that Iranian accounts would still be able to communicate with foreign accounts. But the tweet indicates they just disabled accounts with Iranian phone numbers. (Subject line at time of this comment: "WhatsApp has disabled communication between accounts from Iran during protests") (… and it was fixed 12 minutes later, thanks dang!)
- dang 4y ago
  We've since changed the title - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937709.
shadowgovt 4y ago
As distasteful as it can be to Western sensibilities, nobody should be surprised when an international corporation complies with the law of the nation in which it is operating. It's one of the things that makes a corporation international.
- namlem 4y ago
  In this case they should, because Iran is subject to sanctions. Meta should not be complying with their requests.
  - tchalla 4y ago
    Is that how sanctions work?
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      It is unclear because sanctions law is so complicated. https://www.lawfareblog.com/did-twitter-violate-us-sanctions-law https://www.lawfareblog.com/did-twitter-violate-us-sanctions...
    - Kamq 4y ago
      Depends on the sanction (and where the company is based). Specifically for Iran? I'm not entirely sure if there's restrictions on compliance with general requests.
  - rakoo 4y ago
    If Meta were to comply with western sanctions, shouldn't they prohibit all access to all the people in Iran ?
dang 4y ago
Edit: we've merged this thread into https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32934936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32934936, except the ones that were responding to the editorialized title. --- Original comment: There's also https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1572765009972989954 https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/15727650099729899... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937397, but we merged that thread hither). It's clear that accounts are having trouble communicating but the various tweets on this seem to have conflicting explanations about who is doing it. Is this known? Edit: the OP editorialized the title, which is against the site guidelines (please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). We've changed it now to what the tweet actually says—which is agnostic on the above point. Submitted title was "WhatsApp has disabled communication between accounts from Iran during protests".) Submitters: Please don't do that! It has an enormous impact on threads, as it did here, and usually a very bad one.
- sbergjohansen 4y ago
  Any update on this 24h on? It would be really interesting to understand whether Meta is playing an active role in blocking the use of Whatsapp for users with a particular country code, but who are currently outside the affected country (as some trending but unsubstantiated posts on LinkedIn/Twitter allege), or whether it really is that easy for a single government to block the service globally for a subset of its users.
  - dang 4y ago
    All I've seen is a few posts that have continued to come in to HN: Meta is restricting Iranian phone numbers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32944717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32944717 - Sept 2022 (1 comment) WhatsApp got blocked in Iran but stopped working for Iranians traveling abroad - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32943646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32943646 - Sept 2022 (0 comments) Meta is helping the Islamic Republic in its war against Iranians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32940404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32940404 - Sept 2022 (3 comments) It's not clear if these have more recent information or not - it looks to me like some are from the same time yesterday but just got posted later. It's also not clear what's actually happening. Perhaps there's more reliable info somewhere on the web. I agree with you that it would be interesting to know either way, but I guess we have to wait for significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) before having another big thread about this; otherwise we'd just get a repeat of the current thread.

133 points by nasir 4y ago

Honestly it show's how much of marketing stunt/performance this is for Signal. Literally ever since they've released the proxy configuration - no pull requests were accepted, Issues can't be opened and no updates were published. If they want to have people deploy proxies, they should at least make sure that who deploys them is doing this in a safe fashion for everyone involved.

amadeuspagel 4y ago

If only there was some principle that WhatsApp could abide by, rather then being torn between different governments, pressure groups ...

nasir 4y ago
This possibly explains why WhatsApp and Instagram were not blocked in Iran similar to Telegram. There seems to be a deal between Meta and the the government of Iran.
- runnerup 4y ago
  I'd wonder if that violates any sanctions.
  - psuresh 4y ago
    Sanctions are joke nowadays. Every country tweak it to its needs.
pid-1 4y ago
Why would Whatsapp have any principles besides following local laws? It's just trouble with no business gains.
- amadeuspagel 4y ago
  As this example shows, following local laws can itself mean trouble.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Why would any business have any principles besides following local laws? Local laws change. Facebook’s sociopathic culture has put it at a material disadvantage when it comes to public opinion and merger/regulatory approvals. If that spills into judgement of its employees, it could turn into a recruiting problem.
  - pid-1 4y ago
    I see where your are coming from, but I'm not convinced the alternatives are any better. The moment Meta fails to follow any local law, policimakers all over the world will scratch their heads and think about how that could happen in their own juridictions. There will be consequences. Moreover, most countries in the world regulate speech in many ways. I don't see why Meta should bear the responsibility of being the global free speech police when local citizens themselves were not keen at fighting this battle.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > moment Meta fails to follow any local law Meta has a thorough history of selectively following local laws. > don't see why Meta should bear the responsibility of being the global free speech police They don't. They have a duty to not undermining American interests overseas. If they need active lawmaking to tell them when they are and are not doing that, Congress will create a permanent regulator for them.
- beardyw 4y ago
  Reputation. Ignore it at your peril.

j3th9n 4y ago

What would the incentive be for Meta?

agilob 4y ago
Meta will do evil things for free.
netsharc 4y ago
Maybe it's someone wearing the compliance suit noticing (due to Iranian protesters) that, "Wait a minute, these are Iranians, and we're not allowed to do business with them!" (is that the text of the sanctions law, or maybe it's a compliance suit-wearer's overly cautious interpretation of it?). The suit-wearer might prefer to be compliant with the US law rather than help the revolutionaries...
spywaregorilla 4y ago
I would guess that the Iranian government ordered them to do this.

eqvinox 4y ago

The HN summary line is very confusing (for me), from reading "between accounts from Iran" I was astounded that Iranian accounts would still be able to communicate with foreign accounts. But the tweet indicates they just disabled accounts with Iranian phone numbers. (Subject line at time of this comment: "WhatsApp has disabled communication between accounts from Iran during protests") (… and it was fixed 12 minutes later, thanks dang!)

dang 4y ago
We've since changed the title - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937709.

shadowgovt 4y ago

As distasteful as it can be to Western sensibilities, nobody should be surprised when an international corporation complies with the law of the nation in which it is operating. It's one of the things that makes a corporation international.

namlem 4y ago
In this case they should, because Iran is subject to sanctions. Meta should not be complying with their requests.
- tchalla 4y ago
  Is that how sanctions work?
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    It is unclear because sanctions law is so complicated. https://www.lawfareblog.com/did-twitter-violate-us-sanctions-law https://www.lawfareblog.com/did-twitter-violate-us-sanctions...
  - Kamq 4y ago
    Depends on the sanction (and where the company is based). Specifically for Iran? I'm not entirely sure if there's restrictions on compliance with general requests.
- rakoo 4y ago
  If Meta were to comply with western sanctions, shouldn't they prohibit all access to all the people in Iran ?

dang 4y ago

Edit: we've merged this thread into https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32934936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32934936, except the ones that were responding to the editorialized title. --- Original comment: There's also https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1572765009972989954 https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/15727650099729899... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937397, but we merged that thread hither). It's clear that accounts are having trouble communicating but the various tweets on this seem to have conflicting explanations about who is doing it. Is this known? Edit: the OP editorialized the title, which is against the site guidelines (please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). We've changed it now to what the tweet actually says—which is agnostic on the above point. Submitted title was "WhatsApp has disabled communication between accounts from Iran during protests".) Submitters: Please don't do that! It has an enormous impact on threads, as it did here, and usually a very bad one.

sbergjohansen 4y ago
Any update on this 24h on? It would be really interesting to understand whether Meta is playing an active role in blocking the use of Whatsapp for users with a particular country code, but who are currently outside the affected country (as some trending but unsubstantiated posts on LinkedIn/Twitter allege), or whether it really is that easy for a single government to block the service globally for a subset of its users.
- dang 4y ago
  All I've seen is a few posts that have continued to come in to HN: Meta is restricting Iranian phone numbers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32944717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32944717 - Sept 2022 (1 comment) WhatsApp got blocked in Iran but stopped working for Iranians traveling abroad - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32943646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32943646 - Sept 2022 (0 comments) Meta is helping the Islamic Republic in its war against Iranians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32940404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32940404 - Sept 2022 (3 comments) It's not clear if these have more recent information or not - it looks to me like some are from the same time yesterday but just got posted later. It's also not clear what's actually happening. Perhaps there's more reliable info somewhere on the web. I agree with you that it would be interesting to know either way, but I guess we have to wait for significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) before having another big thread about this; otherwise we'd just get a repeat of the current thread.