This is on the media's midweek podcast. I'm Brooke Gladstone. At the end of November, familiar

scenes of protest in Tehran were being documented and shared across the world.

Protesters have taken to the streets of Iran's capital city as the country faces some of its

worst economic pressures in years. Crowds cheering around this bonfire, dancing around the flames.

Chanting down with the dictator, blasting the regime over Iran's failing economy and soaring inflation.

But on January 8th, the images stopped coming.

Iran's internet was cut off late on Thursday, apparently an attempt by the authorities

to prevent protesters from organizing and also stop them posting videos online for the outside

world to see.

Activists say more than 6,000 people are now dead and 11,000 injured in the Iranian protests.

I would say everyone I've spoken to in the diaspora knows someone at least one degree away from them who has been murdered.

Masa Ali Mardani is the Associate Director of the Technology Threats and Opportunities Program at Witness,

where she works on distinguishing visual truths in the AI age. She says that the internet has started

flickering back on after a nearly three-week national blackout, the longest the country has

ever seen. And yet a thick fog of disinformation still covers Iran. It's really unfathomable.

The internet shutdowns is just the one layer of what they do

to ensure that the power to witness, the power to document

is extremely difficult.

You've noted that one of Iran's first global shutdowns

happened in 2009.

It was brief, but the government was spooked by an

image that went viral, which let them know that this was a force that they were going to have to

...