You Tube, Facebook Banned in Iran

November 20, 2008 8:06 a.m. EST

(TML) - Iran has decided to block some five million websites, whose content is mostly perceived as immoral and anti-social, a local judiciary official was quoted as saying by various news wires.

Hugely popular sites such as You Tube and Facebook were among the ones that were blocked.

The official said the reason for the ban was that the Internet inflicted social, political, economic and moral damage.

Internet providers have been instructed to ban access to political, human rights and women's sites and blogs that express dissent or are considered to be pornographic or anti-Islamic.

Internet is extremely popular in Iran and some 21 million of the country's population of 65 million are connected; the country ranks as one of the top 20 user countries globally.

In addition to social networking sites such as Facebook, blogging is very popular in Iran and many journalists who worked for reformist newspapers that were banned by President Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad in 2000 have now turned to blogging as a means of continuing their work.

While satellite television is banned in Iran, according to government figures it is estimated that some 30 percent of the population have access to satellite TV; however, the actual number is likely to be much higher.