Protests Against Creation of 'Fake Accounts' on Soroush Messaging App for Some Iranian Users

A number of social media users claim that an account has been created on the Soroush messaging app using their name and phone number without their 'knowledge.' Meysam Seyed Salehi, the director of the Soroush app, has denied this issue. These reports come after the blocking of the popular Telegram messaging app in Iran and the efforts of the Islamic Republic's officials to encourage citizens to use domestic messaging apps, particularly 'Soroush.' These efforts occur amid claims by several political figures and members of parliament that the Iranian people do not 'trust' domestic messaging apps. While it is claimed that the number of users of these domestic messaging apps is increasing, Rasoul Saraiyan, head of the Information Technology Organization, states that 50% of the 70% decrease in views of Telegram posts has occurred since the app was filtered. On June 7, one month after Telegram was blocked in Iran, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology announced that while seven million people have installed domestic messaging apps, only one million have left Telegram. Despite ongoing doubts about the number of active users of domestic messaging apps, with some believing that the claimed statistics include individuals who have merely installed the apps and are not considered active users, the Soroush app has also been accused by some social media users of 'profile forgery.' According to ISNA news agency, in recent days, some users claim that while they have 'not taken any action to download and install the Soroush app, they have been informed that they are present on Soroush and are even online.' These users say they learned through their friends that there is a profile with their name and even their picture on the Soroush network. Meanwhile, Meysam Seyed Salehi, the director of the Soroush app, has rejected these claims and stated that the existence of any account without the owner's knowledge is 'absolutely impossible.' Although he has stated that the 'only method' for activating an account on Soroush is to provide a mobile number and enter an activation code, ISNA has reported that 'this raises the question of how, if even one of these claims is true, this event occurred and how the necessary activation code for creating an account was made available to the Soroush messaging app.' Previously, social media users used the term 'forced migration' in response to the term 'voluntary migration' to domestic messaging apps used by Islamic Republic officials. The issue of creating accounts 'without knowledge' on Soroush has been mocked by some users. Mahdi Ranjipour tweeted: 'I don’t even know what the Soroush logo looks like, but my friend sent me this screenshot showing that I am a member of Soroush, and I am online! If you send a message, I might reply :))).' He added, 'I think they added all of us like this to reach 25 million members! The Soroush director knew something when he requested 10 million members!' Another user wrote: 'I went home, and my wife slapped me and said, 'Didn’t I tell you to buy onions?' It’s possible that Soroush has created an account for me because I am single.' Despite the 'resistance' of Iranian users to using domestic messaging apps, according to the Minister of Communications, judicial authorities are strongly defending the blocking of Telegram and have declared its filter permanent. Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, the deputy judicial prosecutor of the country, stated that 'the lifting of the Telegram filter is not true, and the Telegram filter is definitive and permanent.' Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, the Attorney General of Iran, has also rejected requests from several ministers and members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly to lift the filter on the Twitter social network. According to him, 'Twitter has been filtered by judicial order, and therefore it cannot be raised in the working group determining the instances of criminal content, and as a result, we will not address it.' While Twitter is filtered in Iran, the offices of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, Hassan Rouhani, the President, and Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran, are active on this social network.