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Iran ICT Minister Calls for Lifting Ban on Twitter

reporter 1222 — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 05:02:02 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – The minister of communications and information technology of Iran said on Sunday he has demanded that the ban on Twitter be lifted.

Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi told the Parliament’s news agency ICANA that his ministry has made a request for the removal of the ban on the social networking service.

Azari-Jahromi said the issue needs to be addressed by a 12-member working group that is responsible for monitoring websites and social networking services and bans those it finds containing criminal contents.

He said the ministry’s request has not been put on the agenda by the working group.

According to IRNA, the minister has long been pursuing the removal of the ban on Twitter, but he has said the issue is out of his hand and must be decided collectively.

Twitter has been inaccessible in Iran since 2009, following protests in the aftermath of the 2009 presidential election.

Despite the ban, some high-ranking Iranian officials have accounts and are active on Twitter.

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Trump Retweets Falsely Claim of Coronavirus ‘Cure’, Twitter Deletes

reporter 1222 — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 08:22:39 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Twitter removed a tweet that had been retweeted by US President Donald Trump that falsely said that there was a cure for the coronavirus.

Late Monday, Trump retweeted the tweet from an account with the handle “@stella_immanuel” that said: “Covid has cure. America wake up.”

Twitter soon after removed the tweet and replaced it with a gray box that says, “This Tweet is no longer available.”

A cure for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, doesn’t exist, and scientists have been working on developing both a range of treatments and vaccines. They and the Trump administration are racing to have a vaccine ready by the end of the year.

Twitter said early Tuesday, “Tweets with the video are in violation of our COVID-19 misinformation policy.”

Trump also retweeted tweets defending the use of the drug hydroxychloroquine, including one that accused Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, of misleading the public by dismissing the drug.

“I have not been misleading the public under any circumstances,” Fauci responded Tuesday morning on ABC’s “Good Morning America” when asked for his reaction to Trump’s retweets.

Fauci reiterated that the “overwhelming prevailing clinical trials” that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it’s “not effective” in treating the coronavirus, NBC News reported.

Meanwhile, the US president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was temporarily locked out of his Twitter account on Tuesday after posting the same controversial video shared by Trump promoting hydroxychloroquine and saying people don’t need to wear masks, said Andy Surabian, an adviser to the president’s son. In a text message, Surabian said the president’s son should be able to resume tweeting later in the day.

“Twitter suspending Don Jr. For sharing a viral video of medical professionals discussing their views on Hydroxychloroquine is further proof that Big Tech is intent on killing free expression online and is another instance of them committing election interference to stifle Republican voices,” Surabian said in a statement. “It is beyond the pale for Twitter to silence someone for sharing the views of medical professionals who happen to dissent with their anti-Hydroxychloroquine narrative.”

The president had recently tried to take a more moderate approach to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He conceded, for example, last week at one of his restarted coronavirus White House briefings that it will likely “get worse before it gets better.” The president has also been touting the importance of wearing masks after dismissing them for months. Despite his change in tone, he pushed states to reopen on Monday as a number of experts are calling for states to shut down.

Twitter has been much more aggressive in recent months in either removing tweets posted by the president, fact-checking them in real time or even placing warning labels over them.

The social media giant first fact-checked a pair of tweets posted by Trump in May when he claimed there was “NO WAY” an election with boosted mail-in voting would be legitimate. Twitter added a fact-check label to both tweets.

A few days later, Trump signed an executive order that asked federal regulators to revisit a 1996 law that protects websites from liability for what their users post.

And then a day after he signed the executive order, Twitter put a tweet from Trump behind a warning label, which said that the president had violated its rules against glorifying violence when he tweeted about protests over the death of George Floyd.

In June, Twitter and Facebook removed a video posted to Trump’s social media accounts of a “racist baby” because of a copyright claim from one of the children’s parents. Twitter labeled the video “manipulated media.”

Trump stood by his comments on hydroxychloroquine at a press briefing later Tuesday, telling reporters “I happen to believe in it.”

“I would take it. I, as you know, took it for a 14-day period, and I’m here,” Trump said. “It didn’t get me, and it’s not going to — hopefully — hurt anybody.”

The Food and Drug Administration has recommended against taking hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine to treat or prevent COVID-19. Trump said in May that he was taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent contracting the virus.

Trump abruptly ended the briefing Tuesday after a reporter asked him why he would share content to his Twitter account from a doctor who has pushed wildly false medical information including that doctors make medicine using DNA from aliens and that doctors are trying to create a vaccine to make people immune from becoming religious.

“She was on air along with many other doctors. They were being fans of hydroxychloroquine, and I thought she was very impressive in the sense that — from where she came, I don’t know which county she comes from — but she said that she’s had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients, and I thought her voice was an important voice. But I know nothing about her,” Trump said before leaving the briefing room.

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Twitter: Hackers Used Employee Credentials to Get Access

reporter 1222 — Sat, 18 Jul 2020 13:00:07 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – The recent attack on accounts of prominent figures was carried out by hackers who infiltrated the company’s internal systems using several employees’ credentials, Twitter said on Saturday.

“The attackers successfully manipulated a small number of employees and used their credentials to access Twitter’s internal systems, including getting through our two-factor protections”, the company said in a blog post on the matter.

The social media company said that the attackers appear to have used social engineering tactics to force employees to take certain actions and divulge key information, Sputnik reported.

From initial assessments, Twitter has found that the hack compromised 130 accounts, 45 of which “the attackers were able to initiate a password reset, login to the account, and send Tweets.” Additionally, the hackers took steps to begin downloading statistics from eight of those accounts.

The hack which took place on Wednesday saw Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk and more well-known US figures lose access to their accounts. The hackers then posted messages urging users to send bitcoin to an account to receive double the amount back.

Twitter was forced to issue a blanket ban on tweeting from all verified accounts.

The New York Times reported that the attack was coordinated between four people, one of whom said he was a Twitter employee. Two of the group, from the US and UK, reached out to the paper saying their participation involved hacking lesser-known accounts with attractive usernames for later reselling and had not anticipated the scale of the attack.

The hack saw the perpetrators rake in the bitcoin equivalent of $180,000 in a matter of hours. The Federal Bureau of Investigations has launched a probe into the attack.

The hack is the largest the company has ever experienced which may put a dent in the security reputation of what is essentially the world’s de facto wire service.

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Twitter Hides ‘Abusive’ Trump Tweet Threatening Protests

reporter 1222 — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 07:14:50 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Twitter on Tuesday hid a tweet from US President Donald Trump in which he threatened to use “serious force” against protestors in the US capital, saying it broke rules over abusive content.

The move appeared to be the first by Twitter against the president for an “abusive” tweet. In a growing dispute, the platform has recently labeled other Trump tweets as misleading and violating its standards on promoting violence.

“There will never be an ‘Autonomous Zone’ in Washington, DC, as long as I’m your President. If they try they will be met with serious force!” Trump tweeted.

The action by Twitter requires users to click through to read the Trump tweet, with a tag on the message that it “violated the Twitter rules about abusive behavior” but that it would remain accessible “in the public’s interest.”

Trump’s tweet referred to the police-free district created by protesters in Seattle, in Washington state, two weeks ago, which has sparked outrage among conservatives.

Twitter’s move escalated the battle between the White House and social media firms which Trump has accused of bias against conservatives, despite his own large following.

The president has already signed an executive order which could lead to more government oversight of social media firms, despite doubts about its legal authority.

The Trump administration has also signaled it wants to overhaul a law that gives online services immunity from content posted by others, a move which could open the floodgates to litigation.

Twitter said in a statement to AFP it took the action Tuesday because the tweet violated its policy against abusive behavior with “a threat of harm against an identifiable group.”

Twitter’s policy in dealing with world leaders in most cases calls for violating messages to be labeled — which limits its reach and prevents others from liking or retweeting it — but leaves the tweets available because if they relate to “ongoing matters of public importance.”

The new, aggressive stand by Twitter on rule-breaking by the president stands in contrast with Facebook, which has maintained a largely hands-off policy despite pressure from activists to curb inflammatory content.

Facebook did remove a Trump ad last week that contained a symbol used in Nazi Germany for political prisoners, saying it violated the platform’s policy against “organized hate.”

The post Twitter Hides ‘Abusive’ Trump Tweet Threatening Protests appeared first on Iran News Daily.

Leader accounts in Twitter Suspended

reporter 1222 — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 09:21:59 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – With no prior notice, Twitter blocked the accounts used by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei before reinstating only two of the channels of communication.

The American company simultaneously blocked the accounts at 03:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday (11:00 p.m. GMT on Monday). The Persian- and English-language accounts were reinstated minutes afterward, with Twitter claiming it had acted against them by mistake.

The pool of followers had strangely suffered in the process. The English-language account was now being followed by around 490,000 entities, down from the previous 732,000.

Twitter, meanwhile, refused to relieve its obstruction of the Spanish-, Arabic-, and Urdu-language accounts as well as one used for posting videos.

The accounts would repeatedly post content promoting integrity among the world’s Muslims in the face of divisive measures by the world’s arrogant powers, including the United States, and entities such as Israel, which enjoy Washington’s unreserved support.

The channels would also relay caution about unjust actions against the Muslim faithful at the hands of domestic or foreign oppressive forces, including those backed by the US.

This is not the first time when American cyber giants, including Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, target Iranian accounts.

In early January, Instagram, US social networking giant Facebook’s sister platform, began acting against many Iranians, who were using its service to communicate their condemnation of Washington’s earlier assassination of top Iranian anti-terror commander, Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani. Instagram was seen either deleting the accounts belonging to the bereaving Iranians or eliminating relevant content posted by them.

Last April, Instagram blocked the pages belonging to many commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), whose Quds Force used to be headed by General Soleimani before his assassination.

Later this January, Iran’s Fars news agency said access to its .com domain had been blocked after the US Treasury Department blacklisted the media group.

Last December, Google blocked access to Iranian media networks, Press TV and Hispan TV’s official YouTube accounts without any prior notification.

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US Senators Urge Twitter to Suspend Accounts of Iran’s Leader

reporter 1222 — Sat, 08 Feb 2020 15:20:49 +0000

US Senators Urge Twitter to Suspend Accounts of Iran’s Leader

According To Iran News, A group of US Republican senators in a letter called on Twitter to ban the accounts of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

In the letter, sent to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Thursday, senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee threatened that the company would be subject to US sanctions law if it did not end its service to the Iranian officials.

They argued that allowing Iran’s Leader and top diplomat to hold Twitter accounts violates an executive order by US President Donald Trump that prohibits Americans from providing goods and services to the Iranian statesmen.

“It is a sanctionable offense for ‘any person’ to have ‘provided … technological support for, or goods or services to persons designated pursuant to that EO,” the senators wrote, according to Press TV.

Twitter, they added, is aware of the accounts held by Ayatollah Khamenei and Zarif, and of their links to the Iranian government, but “continues to provide internet-based communications services.”

On June 24, 2019, Trump signed the executive order imposing sanctions on Iran’s Leader and top commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), saying the measure denies them “access to key financial resources and support.”

One week later, the US Treasury Department blacklisted Zarif — which it described as Iran’s “primary spokesperson around the world”.

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Twitter Warns Android Users Not to Update

reporter 1222 — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 10:02:49 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Twitter company warned millions of users worldwide not to update their Android app, which crashes once opened.

The annoying bug comes shortly after the service had to fix a security glitch allowing hackers to hijack the application, RT reported.

“We’re investigating a problem with the latest version of our Android app that causes it to crash immediately once it’s opened,” the Twitter team wrote Wednesday morning. The warning advises online dwellers to hold up before installing the next 8.28 version until the flaw is dealt with.

Some users have already recorded their own experience of using the malfunctioning application.

It’s unclear if the flaw could affect the safety of Android devices, themselves prone to multiple vulnerabilities. All in all, it’s not uncommon for Twitter to plug security holes in their applications from time to time.

Just a month ago, Android users were told to urgently update the Twitter application after it was found out that a malicious bug could allow hackers to take control over accounts, sending tweets and direct messages.

Twitter said later that the fix required a simple app update, and that there were no signs of any flaws being exploited in this version yet.

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Bolton Returns to Twitter after White House Freezes His Account

reporter 1222 — Sat, 23 Nov 2019 06:35:41 +0000

Bolton Returns to Twitter after White House Freezes His Account

According To Iran News, Former US national security adviser John Bolton said in a series of cryptic tweets that he’s regained control of his personal Twitter account, asserting the White House refused to provide access to it after he resigned in September.

Bolton issued a series of tweets Friday that began with him saying he was glad to be back on Twitter and to “stay tuned”, AP reported.

A third tweet accused the White House of refusing to return access to the account, asking, “Out of fear of what I may say? To those who speculated I went into hiding, I’m sorry to disappoint!”

Finally, Bolton thanked Twitter for “standing by their community standards” and “rightfully returning control” of his account.

Twitter declined to comment. Trump was asked on Fox News whether the White House froze Bolton’s Twitter account.

“Of course not. No, I actually had a good relationship with John,” Trump said. “We disagreed on some things and some methods, but I actually had a good relationship. No, I didn’t do that.”

Bolton and Trump clashed frequently on foreign policy and the US president said the hawkish Bolton did not get along with others in the administration and was out of step with him on policy.

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Zarif: US Interference Everywhere Begets Chaos

reporter 1222 — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 09:35:30 +0000

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif lashed at the US government for bringing about chaos and repression wherever it interferes.

In a post on his Twitter account on Thursday night, the Iranian foreign minister said, “Whenever/wherever US interferes, chaos, repression & resentment follow.”

He also dismissed the US notion that Iran needs to behave like what Washington calls a “normal” country, adding, “The day Iran mimics US clients & SecPompeo’s ‘human rights models’ —be it the Shah or current butchers— to become a ‘normal’ country is the day hell freezes over. Best for the US to just get over loss of Iran.”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly said the sanctions Washington has imposed on Tehran are meant to ensure that Iran “behaves like a normal country.”

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Iranian Parl. speaker has no account on Twitter: official

reporter 1222 — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 11:01:55 +0000

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has no account on Twitter, said the director of the Parliament’s Cultural and Public Relations Office.

Mehdi Kiaei tweeted on Friday that Larijani has no account on this social media.

He went on to mention that the Parliament speaker only has an account on Instagram [@larijani_ir] and an official website [larijani.ir].

Earlier on Friday, a Twitter user who claimed to be Ali Larijani, wrote, “To have easy and effective communication with dear people and other foreign contacts, I will be active on Twitter from today.”

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