They have blocked most of the popular messaging platforms including Telegram long time ago but for some reason they have not blocked WhatsApp.
Since the current round of protests in Iran started in mid-September, they also blocked WhatsApp, but only because they don't want people organizing, discussing and sharing in groups. Basically everything is blocked now and this new development is most likely a temporary thing until they can handle the protests.
But isn't the fact that they haven't blocked WhatsApp in these years suspicious? Maybe they have access to NSO's Pegasus spyware or something similar. I don't think NSO would sell it to Iran considering NSO is an Israeli company, but they could still do it by using a middleman and not letting NSO know who the real customer is. Or maybe they developed a similar tool themselves because they have the motivation and the money to buy the information even if they are not capable to find it themselves.
People don't post about these things out of intellectual curiosity—they mostly just reiterate pre-existing positions and points and agendas. Such comments typically make up for the lack of curiosity or information with rhetoric and indignation. That's what we're trying to avoid on HN.
I only had access to it because my rss reader had already saved the link to the blog post in its internal database. But there wasn't any reference of it anymore on HN when I wanted to reach the comment page.
Beside that, the rumors of journalists being fired from english media sphere for their coverage of the recent Nord-stream sabotage and the self-censoring (kind of olympic level mental gymnastic) of some other reporters about the event is mind-bogging.
