I’m pleased to share the final report from my year as a Senior ICFP Fellow with the Open Technology Fund. This phase of Digital Iran focused on understanding how Iranian gamers adapt to and resist state information controls, including throttling, VPN blocking, and internet shutdowns.
Over the course of the fellowship, I conducted:
- 22 qualitative interviews with Iranian gamers.
- 660 survey responses across 100+ cities.
- Network measurements using RIPE Atlas to document latency, packet loss, and circumvention tactics.
Key findings:
- Iranian gamers demonstrate sociotechnical resilience by combining technical workarounds (VPN switching, tunneling, DNS) with social practices of trust and information-sharing.
- While many describe gaming as “apolitical,” censorship and surveillance politicize leisure, turning gaming platforms into contested spaces of both play and resistance.
- Adaptive resilience is not just technical — it is also affective, rooted in solidarity, humor, and peer-to-peer mentoring within online communities.
This report highlights how everyday users navigate authoritarian controls, and why their practices matter for broader debates about internet governance, digital rights, and the future of global information freedom.
As this phase closes, Digital Iran is expanding into new directions:
- Investigating the interaction between AI tools and algorithmic governance and their impact on authoritarian control systems, with the goal of developing a predictive model for users in Iran.
- Exploring the role of libraries and public institutions in supporting communities facing disinformation and surveillance.
- Building comparative frameworks to situate Iran within global debates on resilience and internet freedom.
The full report: