Iran gets brief glimpse of Facebook and Twitter, loses it

Yesterday, the people of Iran got a brief glimpse of life on Twitter and Facebook for the first time in four years.

According to the Washington Post, customers of several internet providers managed to get uninterrupted service to the two social networks.

Unfortunately for citizens of the country, access to both was quickly shut off again. According to the Hindu, the blocks were put up just a few hours after it was lifted.

Most indications suggest therefore that the brief access was down to a “technical glitch” that was quickly rectified.

Many would’ve been disappointed that this was the case, as there had been hopes that regulations had been loosened with the election of President Hasan Rouhan.

Rouhan is widely perceived to be far more moderate than his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Plans still appear to be underfoot to give Iranian citizens state-controlled email addresses. The country also banned international email providers such as Gmail and Yahoo!.

While a number of social media and Western sites are banned in Iran, it’s widely believed that a number of Iranians still access these sites, using workarounds.

That kind of evasion may have been behind the Iran’s proposed “Iranternet“, which would prevent Iranian citizens from accessing the external web.