Facebook and Twitter have finally become widely accessible to Iranian users for the first time within the last four years. The social networks were blocked in the country when there were widespread protests against former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.



Although the unfreezing of the services hasn’t been officially announced, the representatives of foreign press residing in Tehran have tweeted that they could finally access the service freely. In the meantime, the director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has also received numerous reports from people using several different Iranian ISPs. The reports confirmed that the block appeared to have been lifted. Aside from Facebook and Twitter, other websites which had been blocked were also suddenly unblocked.

Iranian government banned Facebook and Twitter more than four years ago, when Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election victory provoked massive protests and such social media as the US giants were used to organize demonstrations.

Fortunately, new president, the moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani, has announced he will adopt a much different approach to social media from that of its hardline predecessor.