For Saudis, social media use and texting are liberating instruments that allow them to freely express themselves to a large audience in a country where so many aspects of their daily lives are monitored or restricted.
Skype, Twitter, and Whatsapp and Viber — texting tools — became subject to a ban in Saudi Arabia in September, as the government demanded the right to monitor all transmissions these web-based communications apps use inside the country. More than anything, social media in Saudi Arabia has become a platform where the youth especially are able to share and find people who echo their interests, so it makes sense the monarchy wants to keep track of all of it.
Saudi Arabia’s Communications and Information Technology Commission requires all pre-paid SIM card users “enter a personal identification number when recharging their accounts, and the number must match the one registered with their mobile operator when the SIM was purchased. The country’s second-largest telecom company, Mobily, was temporarily banned from selling its pay-as-you-go SIM cards after it failed to comply with the regulations,” according to a report by the Daily Beast last year.
Viber is hard for the state to monitor and deprives licensed telecom companies of revenue from international calls and texts. It also allows subscribers to make free calls, send instant messages and share files over the internet.
“The Viber application has been suspended … and the (regulator) affirms it will take appropriate action against any other applications or services if they fail to comply with regulatory requirements and rules in force in the kingdom,” the CITC said in a statement on its website in June, according to a report by Reuters.
The CITC didn’t explain what regulatory requirements and rules Viber breached, but the Saudi leadership seemed to be pushing for greater control over the Internet as smartphone usage soars within its own borders. The regulator issued a vaguely-worded edict in March warning that Viber, Whatsapp and Skype broke local laws, but didn’t specify how.
Yet Twitter is very popular and surprisingly tolerated. According to recent research, Saudi Arabia has the world’s highest Twitter and YouTube use per capita, with a whopping 90-million page views of the YouTube a day. It also has the most Facebook use in the Gulf, according to a report by the Guardian newspaper.
It may come as a shock that an absolute monarchy with no parliament or political parties, enforced gender segregation and an official morality police would have such a robust social-media community. But the Saudis tweet by the millions to trade mundane information, complain about salaries and corruption.
And that’s what has the royal authorities worried.
They don’t want what happened in Iran in its 2009 national elections happening in their country. Or what happened in Egypt, with social media in the first Arab Spring revolution that brought down Hosni Mubarak.
Small protests have cropped up here and there in the Kingdom, but they have been quickly dispersed, and the government would never tolerate an outright uprising facilitated by social media or text messaging.