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CC:TwitterBoardofDirectors
DearMr.Musk,
March28,2023
Our organization, the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI), a non-profit and non-partisan Iranian-American organization advocatingforaUS policytowardsIranbasedonhumanrightsanddemocracyisextremelyconcernedbytherecentmasssuspension of Persian-language Twitter accounts. These accounts largely consist of anti-regime, pro-democracy dissidents who often use pseudonymsoutoffearofretributionbytheIslamicRepublicfortheirdigitalactivism
Between March 20th, 2023 and March 25th, 2023, hundreds of Twitter accounts belonging to individuals opposing the Islamic Republic were suspended predominantly due to alleged violations of Twitter’s Violent Speech Policy, which states, “You may not share abusive content, harass someone, or encourage other people to do so ”
Upon inspection of the Tweets cited for many of these suspensions, our team’s analysis indicates that the vast majority abidebythe rules laid out in Twitter’s Violent Speech Policy and a suspension of these accounts under the Violent Speech Policy were either carried out erroneously or were not done in good faith This wave of accountsuspensionsmayhavebeentriggeredbyfalsepositives for artificial bot behavior, which could be attributed totheIraniandigitalactivistcommunity'suseofvirtualprivatenetworks(VPNs) and pseudonymous Twitter handles As you are undoubtedly aware, the Islamic Republic does not allow access to Twitter, so users within Iran must connect to the platform via VPN and use pseudonyms in order to protect themselves from potential imprisonment, torture,andexecutionatthehandsofthecurrentregime.
AlistofIraniandigitalactivistswhohavebeensuspendedandcensoredinrecentdaysisavailableuponrequest
The leadership of Twitter an organization which holds itself “publicly accountable towards progress” and espouses the values of security, privacy, civic integrity, and the Open Internet has a clear obligation to provide detailed insight into the decision making processthatledtothesuddensuspensionofthesedissidentsaswellaswhatwehopeistheprocessforthereversalofthesuspensions.
As agrassrootsIranian-Americanorganization,weurgeyoutorecognizethehistoricnatureofthismomentasIraniansarefightingfor their freedom on the streets of cities across Iran and to uphold Twitter’s commitment to open discourse and allow these users to continuetouseTwitterasoneoftheirfewremainingoutletsforfreeexpression.