Director of a 'Self-Approved' Messaging App Released Hours After 'Arrest'

Hours after the news of the arrest of the CEO of one of the government-approved messaging apps in Iran on charges of 'publishing immoral content' on the platform he manages, the judiciary announced his release 'on bail'. Just before that, the website 'Mashregh News', which is linked to the security institutions of the Islamic Republic, reported the arrest of Farhad Moradi, the CEO of the domestic messaging platform 'Soroush', stating that the reason for the arrest was 'failure to heed warnings and correspondence from regulatory and judicial bodies'. According to this report, the charge against the CEO of the Soroush messaging app is 'providing a platform for the dissemination of immoral content in cyberspace'. Following this arrest, the Public Relations Center of the Ministry of Communications quickly posted on social media: 'We are following up on the matter and expect more patience from the judiciary in dealing with domestic platforms.' Following the resurgence of a new wave of social and political protests across Iran since December 2017, the popular messaging app 'Telegram' was 'filtered' by the order of the judiciary of the Islamic Republic, blocking users' access to it. After this action and the continued preference of citizens for using such filtered foreign messaging apps, the security authorities of the Iranian government decided to launch similar domestic alternatives for users under the title of 'domestic messaging apps'. On the other hand, the 'Fars' news agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that after Farhad Moradi was summoned several times by bodies linked to the judiciary of the Iranian government and failed to appear, an 'arrest warrant' was issued for him. Despite the fact that the 'Soroush' messaging app is affiliated with the public institution 'Jam-e Jam' and the state broadcasting organization, which, like other similar domestic messaging apps, has benefited from government privileges and billions in aid to start and continue its activities, it has not yet gained significant popularity among users. According to 'Meta', despite the widespread crackdown on last year's protests and the Iranian government's efforts to block social networks, 'tens of millions' of Iranians still use Instagram (another filtered platform like Telegram).