Iran has launched its own video sharing website naming it as Mehr.ir which is a Persian word meaning Affection. Mehr is Iranian version of YouTube intended for promoting Iranian culture and is specially designed to share government approved content.
Iran has wider plans of building a domestic internet and this video sharing website mehr.ir, focused on Persian speakers worldwide is a major part of this plan.
Newswire AFP reported on Sunday that Iranian regime has labeled much of YouTube content as inappropriate and has consistently censored YouTube videos since 2009, thus Mehr.ir is intended to show only government approved videos.
Lotfolla Siahkali, deputy chief Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting said on this topic:
From now on, people can upload their short films on the Web site and access [IRIB] produced material.
Iran has reportedly been shutting down access to the foreign internet services with a plan to set up its own national intranet.
YouTube hosted an anti-Islamic video a few months back and thus Iranian government cut off access to Google’s email services as well as search late back in September 2012 as a revenge.
The government of Iran also took major steps to avoid the cyber attacks and moved its e-government services offline. Though the plan was to move the service to its very own national intranet but tech experts suggested it as a tricky move.
Apart from Iran, China and Russia are also making their internet filter even denser.
