In the aftermath of the 2009 post-presidential election protests in Iran, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube became popular platforms to disseminate videos and information from inside the country to the outside world. In response, authorities quickly blocked the sites, ultimately slowing their growth domestically. That restriction created an opportunity for a messaging app called Telegram to take the country by storm years later.

Telegram is a German-based company created by Russian entrepreneurs Nikolai and Pavel Durov. As of April 2016, Telegram had more than 45 million users in a country of nearly 80 million. It first started as a traditional messaging service with group messaging its most popular feature. When the app introduced its channels feature, individual accounts suddenly flourished and the app became a popular avenue for sharing political content in addition to its already popular use of entertainment and sharing memes.

For Iranians, one of the best features of the app is that it allows users to remain anonymous.

Because of its rapid rise in popularity, Iranian officials were slow to regulate the platform, as they do to traditional media outlets in the country. However, that has been slowing changing and with a presidential election little more than a month away, authorities are scrambling to get the app, or at least much of its user-generated content, under control.