Images of the protests that followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini on Sept. 16, 2022, in Iran and reports of the government’s brutal crackdown have circulated widely on social media. This flow of information comes despite efforts by the Iranian regime to throttle internet access and censor information leaving the country.
One effective method the protesters have hit on has been to use TikTok, the video-sharing app better known for young people posting clips of themselves singing and dancing. The way video clips are shared on the social media platform and the protesters’ clever use of labeling have helped activists circumvent the information blockade of Iran’s tech-savvy security services and reach a wide audience.
As a researcher who studies young people and participatory culture – art and information produced by nonspecialists, including fan fiction and citizen journalism – I believe that TikTok is proving to be an effective tool of political activism in the face of severe repression.
Key to its effectiveness is how TikTok works. Each TikTok video recorded by the user is typically 60 seconds or shorter and loops when finished. Other users can edit or “stitch” someone else’s TikTok video into their own. Users can also create a split screen or “duet” TikTok video, with the original video on one side of the screen and their own on the other.
Stitching and duetting
To use TikTok, a protester in Iran typically uses multihop virtual private networks, meaning VPNs that send internet traffic through multiple servers, to route around government internet blackouts just long enough to post a video to TikTok. There, TikTok users who support the protester “like” the video thousands of times, stitch it into other videos, and duet it to then be liked, stitched and duetted again and again.
In the process, identifying information about the original poster is obscured. Within minutes the protester becomes anonymous even as the message spreads. Even if the video is flagged for violating TikTok’s community guidelines, its sharers like and incorporate its duets too quickly for TikTok to remove the original content from the platform completely.
In one video that has received over 620,000 views, Iranian-American attorney Elica Le Bon urges viewers to share all Iranian content to make sure the world keeps paying attention. In another, TikTok user @gal_lynette directs her 35,000 followers to instantly duet videos made by Iranian women as a form of citizen journalism to “keep their reporting – their story … alive.”
Gaming the algorithms
Elsewhere, TikTok user @m0rr1gu tells her 44,000 followers how to share that content without triggering community guidelines violations. This advice includes using “algospeak,” or code, for bypassing community guidelines violations. For TikTokkers boosting Iranian content, this means altering the word “Iran” in captions, among other tactics.
Gaming TikTok’s algorithm helps ensure that the people most likely to share this content can find it. For example, Iranian-American TikTokker Yeganeh Mafaher tapped a recent celebrity scandal’s virality by titling a video “Adam Levine Also DMd Me,” only to announce “Okay, now that I have your attention, the internet is going to be cut off in Ir@n.”
By removing the word “Iran” but leaving Levine’s name searchable, Yeganeh was gaming the algorithm to help her retain her viewers who were seeking Iranian content while also “hashbaiting” additional users who were following the celebrity scandal. Up to that point, Yeganeh’s most-viewed revolution-related video was a history of hijab laws that garnered nearly 341,000 views. The Levine video exceeded 1.6 million.
Yeganeh’s account had previously recorded her experiences as an Iranian-American citizen and attracted followers interested in Iranian culture. After Amini’s death, she credited her followers with boosting her account to the point that she was interviewed by cable news host Chris Cuomo on NewsNation to discuss the uprising.
Song of a movement
A key element of a TikTok video is its audio track or “sound,” often a song that provides a thematic thread across stitched and duetted videos. The sound of many of the videos depicting the events in Iran, with more than 11.7 million views, is the song “Baraye” by Iranian singer-songwriter Shervin Hajipour.
The song’s lyrics are derived from a string of Farsi tweets that detail Iranians’ reasons for revolution. Hajipour was detained because of the song but was later released. “Baraye” has since become a global protest ballad.
Worried for Hajipour’s safety, TikTokkers supporting the uprising united in an effort to shield him from backlash by posting thousands of videos directing users to nominate “Baraye” for the Grammys’ newest special merits award, best song for social change. In October, the song had received 83% of the 115,000 nominations, which increased international attention on Hajipour and the song. Baraye went on to win the social change Grammy on Feb. 5, 2023.
“Baraye” and related hashtags are shared resources that help make TikTok a platform for participatory politics. As the world watches Iran, TikTokkers game the platform’s algorithms to amplify Iranians’ videos beyond the reach of the Iranian government.
There are active TikTok campaigns for everything from Grammy nominations to scripting emails to local representatives and global leaders. Videos teach laypeople to discreetly host Iranian web traffic and direct users to local protests. They share petitions for G-7 leaders to expel Iran’s diplomats and the U.N. to hold the Iranian government accountable for its crimes against international law. As state executions of protesters have begun in Iran, the #StopExecutionsInIran campaign has clocked over 100 million views on TikTok.
Israel will strike any weapons Iran sends to Syria under guise of aid
February 9, 2023
Israel will not hesitate to strike any weapons Iran sends to Syria under the guise of humanitarian aid, amid rescue efforts after a devastating earthquake in the country, an unnamed Israeli military official told the Saudi Elaph newspaper on Thursday.
The anonymous official added that there is intelligence indicating that Iran intends to take advantage of the crisis to send weapons and equipment to Hezbollah and Syria.
The official additionally addressed claims that Israel was ready to provide humanitarian aid to Syria, saying that Israel had received no such requests and that the reports were seemingly published in order to push Israel into issues that "have nothing to do with it." The official stressed that Israel is ready to provide aid wherever necessary if it is asked to do so.
Iran has sent multiple cargo aircraft to Syria since earthquake
A number of Iranian aircraft carrying humanitarian aid have landed in Syria in the days since the earthquake. Hezbollah and Iran-backed militias in Iraq have also joined humanitarian efforts in Syria since the disaster.
The last alleged Israeli airstrike to target Syria was reported in late January after a convoy of trucks crossing from Iraq to Syria was hit by airstrikes. The convoy was reportedly carrying weapons hidden amid food and other products, according to the Elaph report.
Israeli Mossad is striking Iranian military centers and leaders, anywhere in the world
February 9, 2023
There aren’t a lot of sureties in the world these days, especially in world geopolitics. If there’s anything that is certain, it’s that Iran’s hardline Islamic regime won’t get a nuclear weapon or the missile to deliver a nuclear weapon while Israel stands by and watches. Israel will do anything to prevent it.
The Jewish state has every reason to believe that Iran isn’t bluffing when it calls for the death of Israel. Historically, anti-semitic governments have never been blustering when they threaten the existence of the Jewish people. Aside from the biblical stories of persecution, Jews in Russia, Portugal and even Brooklyn, New York, have been the victims of anti-Jewish hate killings. Then, of course, there’s Nazi Germany.
Iran is just the latest to threaten the annihilation of the Jewish people, but this time, the Jewish people have a state of their own, a military that rivals anything in the region, and an intelligence service that is notoriously willing and able to do whatever it takes to protect the world’s Jews, especially those inside Israel.
Of course, this is also the first time where the enemies of the Jewish state are actively seeking the kind of weapon that might accomplish what those who came before failed to do. For around 20 years, with a brief stall during its compliance with the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), Iran has been seeking to build facilities necessary to make a nuclear weapon, and for almost as long, Israel has been trying to prevent it.
The Iranian city of Isfahan is one of the major nerve centers of Iran’s quest to build a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it. At the end of January 2023, a major military factory there exploded after what appeared to be a complex drone attack. The city produces components for the Shahab medium-range missile, which can put Israel in crosshairs.
American officials say the city also produces drones for sale to Russia and may be producing missiles for use in the ongoing war in Ukraine. The building in question, identified as an ammunition manufacturing plant, was attacked by a swarm of quadcopter drones, with at least one of the drones hitting its mark and exploding. Iran is blaming Israel’s intelligence service Mossad for the attack, which is not entirely unfounded.
Israel has been using exploding quadcopter drones to target Iran and Iranian proxies in the region since at least 2019, when it attacked a Hezbollah-dominated area of Beirut, Lebanon. This attack was also designed to destroy missile production capabilities. Two years later an Israeli drone attacked Iranian manufacturing facilities for its centrifuges, essential for creating the nuclear material necessary to build a weapon.
Last year, Israel launched a drone strike against a secret military facility near the Iranian capital of Tehran. The target there was a top-secret site where nuclear weapons, missile technology, and drone advances are designed. The latest strike in Isfahan did little damage, according to Iranian state media, but it may have been designed to do little damage. Some believe it was a message to Iranian leaders that Israel knows where they’re making their missile technology, and the targets can be hit anytime Israel chooses.
An upcoming YouTube video
shared with the New York Times features former Israeli Prime minister Naftali
Bennett declaring that there will be a “price tag” for attacks against the
Jewish state and its people. If the Iranians strike an Israeli or Jewish person
anywhere in the world, there will be swift retribution. Israel has already made
good on the promise, with the assassination of Sayad Khodayee, who Israel
claims is responsible for such killings worldwide.
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