“This is another instance, an important one, in which the officials show how they consistently pick their own self-interest over the public interest,” says Reza Ghazinouri, a strategic adviser for the San Francisco–based human rights and civil liberties group United for Iran.“In the past years, millions of Iranians have fallen below the poverty line, and further limiting access to platforms like Instagram just adds many more to that number.Since September, more than 18,000 people have been detained by Iranian law enforcement related to the demonstrations, and nearly 500 people, including nearly 60 children, have been killed at the protests as officials exert increasingly draconian force on demonstrators.For example, the government has broadened its ability to block encrypted connections to defeat users' efforts to conceal their web browsing.Officials have also continued to expand their blocks on the Google Play Store, Apple's App Store, and browser extension stores, making it harder for Iranians to download circumvention tools."