Ultra-Orthodox Internet Company Meshimir Blocks WhatsApp Messaging
Kosher Message? Ultra-Orthodox rabbis pack Shea Stadium to condemn the internet in June 2012. With Hasidim flocking to WhatsApp, will the free messaging service be their next target? Image by Josh Nathan-Kazis
By Josh Nathan-Kazis February 10, 2014
An ultra-Orthodox web filtering company will begin blocking photos and videos sent via WhatsApp as of February 11.
The smart phone message service, which is wildly popular among ultra-Orthodox Jews, has grown increasingly controversial in recent weeks, with rabbis and community newspapers condemning it in public. Now, key features of WhatsApp will no longer be available to some members of the ultra-Orthodox community.
Meshimir, a filtering company linked to the Satmar Hasidic group, announced in an email on February 9 that filtered phones will block WhatsApp from sending audio, video, and photos. The Forward reported on February 6 that the company was preparing the change.
“As you surely know, our filtering policies are tailored to meet the standards that our customer-base strive to achieve, and is updated from time-to-time according to the rabbinical guidance received,” the company wrote in an email to subscribers. “The latest change was instituted in accordance with that policy.”
Meshimir did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s unclear how Meshimir will block the photos and videos. Their smart phone filtering service, which costs $12.99 a month, must be installed by hand by Meshimir technicians. The company’s website doesn’t say how the service functions, though it’s possible that the technicians “jailbreak” the iPhones of subscribers.
Meanwhile, ultra-Orthodox WhatsApp users are circulating jokes about the new restrictions. One viral joke, which parodies the Meshimir email, posits a new Meshimir filter to block thoughts.
“Our next Generation of blocking and filtering has gone beyond the reach of mobile smart phones,” the viral joke reads. “Our new platform will tap into our users brains and will respond with precision in the event of a bad Thought, sight vision, and even bad gossip. Users will be put into an immediate coma upon detection of an impending penetration of a bad thought.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
