ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iran's Supreme Leader has shut down his own channel on the popular social messaging Telegram app, followed by Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri.
The move is to "end the exclusive [monopoly] of Telegram" and to support the home-based apps, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's media office said in its last Telegram post. It said that other state institutions are scheduled to do the same.
The channel currently has about 1 million subscribers.
The post said that they will announce alternative options for Iranian apps in the near future.
VP Jahangiri said that his office will longer update his channnel.
"In line with the laws and regulations of the country, from today no statement will be published on the channel of the vice president," Eshaq Jahangir's account wrote in a Telegram post on Wednesday.
Jahangiri’s office will use other native platforms.
Tehran imposed a ban on Telegram when anti-government protests spread across dozens of cities in December 2017. The ban was lifted later in January when the Iranian security forces were able to quell the protests.
Some of the protest organizers used Telegram to coordinate the venues for the demonstrations in opposition to the worsening economic situation, but also directed against Khamenei himself. At least 22 people were killed during the wave of the violent protests.
Some Iranian officials have told the local media that the authorities may filter the popular messaging program as early as Saturday.
Telegram has denied that some of its channels were responsible for inciting violence, as Iran claimed.
There are over 40 million Iranian subscribers on Telegram, with 100,000 people said to use the app to run their business.
Khamenei recently issued a religious instruction that stipulated spying on the privacy of people is "forbidden" religiously and also illegal. The decree was to reassure the people that the government will not use Iranian apps to spy on them. But it also said that the authorities have all the right to track down and spy on people whom the authorities accuse of working with the "enemies.”
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