Washington, DC — In light of the mass suspension of Iranian digital activists on Twitter, NUFDI wrote to Twitter CEO Elon Musk outlining the current problems faced by Iranian dissidents on the platform and called on Twitter to protect the right to free speech of Iranian digital activists. The organization wrote, in part:
“These accounts largely consist of anti-regime, pro-democracy dissidents who often use pseudonyms out of fear of retribution by the Islamic Republic for their digital activism.”
NUFDI continued: “The leadership of Twitter – an organization which holds itself “publicly accountable towards progress” and espouses the values of security, privacy, civic integrity, and the Open Internet – has a clear obligation to provide detailed insight into the decision making process that led to the sudden suspension of these dissidents as well as what we hope is the process for the reversal of the suspensions.”
Read the full letter, below. For press inquiries contact press@nufdiran.org.
Dear Mr. Musk,
Our organization, the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI), a non-profit and non-partisan Iranian-American organization advocating for a U.S. policy towards Iran based on human rights and democracy is extremely concerned by the recent mass suspension of Persian-language Twitter accounts. These accounts largely consist of anti-regime, pro-democracy dissidents who often use pseudonyms out of fear of retribution by the Islamic Republic for their digital activism.
Between March 20th, 2023 and March 25th, 2023, hundreds of Twitter accounts belonging to individuals opposing the Islamic Republic were suspended predominantly due to alleged violations of Twitter’s Violent Speech Policy, which states, “You may not share abusive content, harass someone, or encourage other people to do so.”
Upon inspection of the Tweets cited for many of these suspensions, our team’s analysis indicates that the vast majority abide by the rules laid out in Twitter’s Violent Speech Policy and a suspension of these accounts under the Violent Speech Policy were either carried out erroneously or were not done in good faith. This wave of account suspensions may have been triggered by false positives for artificial bot behavior, which could be attributed to the Iranian digital activist community’s use of virtual private networks (VPNs) and pseudonymous Twitter handles. As you are undoubtedly aware, the Islamic Republic does not allow access to Twitter, so users within Iran must connect to the platform via VPN and use pseudonyms in order to protect themselves from potential imprisonment, torture, and execution at the hands of the current regime.
A list of Iranian digital activities who have been suspended and censored in recent days is available upon request.
The leadership of Twitter – an organization which holds itself “publicly accountable towards progress” and espouses the values of security, privacy, civic integrity, and the Open Internet – has a clear obligation to provide detailed insight into the decision making process that led to the sudden suspension of these dissidents as well as what we hope is the process for the reversal of the suspensions.
As a grassroots Iranian-American organization, we urge you to recognize the historic nature of this moment as Iranians are fighting for their freedom on the streets of cities across Iran and to uphold Twitter’s commitment to open discourse and allow these users to continue to use Twitter as one of their few remaining outlets for free expression.
Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
Alireza Nader