The future of a democratic Iran is tied to a decentralized internet

One year after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, activists both in Iran and abroad are still desperately searching for ways to take effective action against the country’s brutal totalitarian regime. One recently launched campaign believes it can help by addressing a singular and crucially important need of the movement: keeping internet access flowing in Iran. 

Amini died in September 2022, shortly after being arrested and detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating mandatory hijab rules. Her death sparked a series of protests and strikes, collectively organized under the popular rallying cry “Women, Life, Freedom.” The movement continues to call for gender equity, freedom of press, criminal justice and economic reforms, and an end to the authoritarian rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, activists inside the country have had their efforts stifled by regular internet shutdowns forced by the Islamic Republic since 2019 to suppress information on deaths and human rights violations by the regime.

“Connectivity has been critical to the Women Life Freedom movement,” says Yasmin Green, CEO of Jigsaw, a nonprofit division at Google dedicated to an open and safe internet. “It’s because the Internet and this movement are inseparable that we’re launching Connectivity is a Human Right; a campaign to raise funds for new censorship circumvention technology that can secure connectivity for Iranians when they need it most.”

The campaign, a joint effort between Jigsaw and nonprofit the Iranian Diaspora Collective, aims to directly combat the internet shutdowns via the use of virtual private networks (VPNs). Thanks to such circumvention techniques, stories of the deaths of hundreds of young protestors, many of whom were teenage girls, spread throughout the world and drew the attention of everyone from Kamala Harris to Dua Lipa.

Without these tweets and videos, Iran’s 87 million citizens have no virtually means of challenging the Islamic Republic’s official narrative, as the government controlled press still maintains the protests are an effort by foreign powers to undermine the government. Journalists who have challenged official storylines are often sentenced to prison, including the two women who first covered the death of Masha Amini.

“There’s an urgent need right now to keep Iran online right now,” says Moj Madhara, founder of the Iranian Diaspora Collective, an anti-Islamic Republic group that works to amplify the stories of Iranians. “[Young Iranians] are actively trying to communicate with us. They’re actively trying to share their stories and experiences…Citizen journalism is at its all time high in Iran.”

VPNs offer a simple yet effective technique that allows users to access blocked platforms through private proxy networks. While it’s impossible to know for sure how many Iranians use these networks, VPN provider Top10VPN did report a 3,056% increase in its Iranian VPN usage in the week following Amini’s death. The nonprofit VPN provider, nthLink, reported a roughly 22-fold increase in server usage during the same period, according to Jigsaw.

However, the simplicity of VPNs also makes them easy targets for government shutdowns. This is particularly true of the most popular and centralized commercial providers, like ExpressVPN. 

“You have this perverse dynamic with censorship circumvention tech, where the more people use them, the more they become on the radar of the government and the government becomes singularly focused on detecting and blocking that VPN”, says Green. 

This cat-and-mouse game between censor and circumventor means that Iranians are often cycling through up to 50 VPNs to find one that works. 

The Connectivity is a Human Right campaign aims to solve this problem by working with Jigsaw’s open source VPN platform to provide small nonprofits and even individuals the toolkit needed to set up their own networks. This increases not only the sheer volume of VPNs, but their technological diversity as well—creating a decentralized internet ecosystem that is exponentially harder to shutdown. 

This accessible technical foundation means that even small groups of internet freedom fighters can significantly challenge one of the world’s most sophisticated totalitarian governments. For instance, one individual working as an EdTech manager was able to use Jigsaw’s technology to single-handedly set up a VPN service that is now used by over 70,000 people. 

Moreover, tech workers with advanced VPN knowledge can fork and enhance Jigsaw’s open-source code, bolstering the underlying circumvention technology—all while maintaining their full-time jobs.

“The [campaign’s technologists] are a group of tech activists.” says Roya Rastegar, codirector of the Iranian Diaspora Collective  “By day they’re working at like Amazon and Microsoft and all the tech companies. By night, they’re literally trying to figure out how to thwart digital authoritarianism and these totalitarian governments.”

This template for decentralized circumvention is likely to be increasingly relevant, as the world progresses towards a more government-controlled internet. According to human rights advocacy group Freedom House, global internet freedom declined for the 12th straight year in 2022—with only 52% of the world now considered to still have “free” or “partly free” internet access. With Iran ranking third worst in the world for internet freedom, the success of its citizens in circumventing government censorship could serve as a template for digital activists all around the globe.

“The idea of media is no longer like a television network,” says Rastegar. “Media is Instagram pages or media sites. Influencers are their own channels. And we’re seeing that all coming out of Iran. And that’s what’s making this such a powerful revolution.