The Ayatollah's betrayal

Social media is the devil isn't it? A way to express ideas, share opinions and publish photographs. Yes, social media is the ultimate enemy if you are trying to keep your citizens in a closed regime cut off from the rest of society, if your nation goes by the name of China, North Korea or Iran.

Today the ordinary citizen can reach out to tens of thousands of people instantly, an ability that used to be reserved solely for public figures and journalists. Today everyone is a reporter,either reporting on their own lives, or public events. Yet, those that are most fearful of the power of social media are themselves scared not to partake; case in point, Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khameini.

Ironically, the leader who denies his citizens access to most of what the internet has to offer is himself active on Facebook, Twitter and even Instagram. I wonder if he considered that in theory none of his population would be able to 'like' his statuses - or perhaps he just figured that none of the hate speech he spews on Facebook would be 'likeable' anyway.

Now United Against Nuclear Iran has written an open letter to the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg, calling for the shutdown of the Ayatollah's page, claiming it goes against their terms of agreement for inseminating hate speech. The letter states that shutting down the Facebook page will send "a powerful message to the Iranian regime that it does not tolerate the regime's denial of digital freedom for the Iranian people". While I agree full heartedly with this message, I also worry that shutting down the Ayatollah's Facebook page will have the negative consequences of even tighter filtering of the internet. As long as the Ayatollah has a Facebook page and people that read his tweets and status updates, there is the tiny hope that he might at some point allow this freedom to the Iranian people - if for nothing else but his own propaganda benefits. However if he no longer has a page then there is no hope that such a freedom will be brought to his people.

The Ayatollah's Facebook page is an utter betrayal of his people. HE allows something for himself, which he blatantly denies to others. Even more so his favoured candidate in the upcoming election is also using the internet to his advantage with a Twitter account, and now he is the first to accept online donations. Will the Ayatollah also demand filtering for Jalili? They call it evil and dangerous, yet they frolic in all it has to offer. The question is - is shutting it down really the solution?