In 2008 Hossein Derakhshan (nick: Hoder) went to prison in Iran on a 19.5 year sentence for blogging. I met him once in Vienna in 2003 where he spoke about the emerging Iranian blogosphere, and the guide he wrote for Iranian bloggers to get started. Over the years he became known as the Iranian ‘blogfather’.

He was pardoned late last year and after 6 years of being locked up and not having internet access he returns to find the ‘net changed. When he went behind bars, blogging was a phenomenon, now it’s the FB’s of this world that set the tone.

“Writing online hasn’t changed much per se, but reading, and the process to get to be read has”. Hyperlinking to eachother to weave a conversation has been taken over by an algorithm creating your timeline for you. Hyperlinking as social currency has disappeared, and if you’re not shown in the timeline, your writings don’t exist.

He sees a change to the visual too. “The Internet-book has become the internet-tv.” Facebook “is not the future of the web, it’s the future of the tv.” “A great loss in terms of intellectual potential and diversity.”

All has become entertainment “up to the point where Iran doesn’t even feel the need to block some social networking sites anymore.”

Update: I see the French article I link to at the top derives from a Medium longread by Hoder himself. Read it in full “The Web We Have To Save“