For years, Iranian political activists, inside and outside Iran, have been complaining about the phenomenon of "disappearing posts" even though some of them had hundreds of thousands of followers. With the outbreak of the new wave of protests this phenomenon intensified dramatically.
Ali (pseudonym), a former employee of the German branch of Telus International, a Canadian franchisee that provides management services to Instagram, told the BBC in Persian that "Iran's intelligence services offered him sums of 5,000 to 10,000 euros in exchange for deleting journalists' profiles. "Ali" and other employees of the company admitted to the Persian BBC that the Iranian regime from Tehran is working to influence the "Telus International" branch in Germany. The company employs about 400 Iranians who "watch over" traffic in Persian.
Masih Alinejad, a leading journalist and political activist with Iranian-American citizenship whom the regime planned to kidnap a year ago from New York to Iran, is one of the main targets of Iranian intelligence. According to a BBC study in Persian, Iranian intelligence offered the employees of a company connected to Facebook and Instagram in Germany to remove its her profile from social networks and offered them thousands of euros.
Photo: Reuters