In this paper, we present a computational analysis of the Persian language Twitter discourse with the aim to estimate the shift in stance toward gender equality following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. We present an ensemble active learning pipeline to train a stance classifier. Our novelty lies in the involvement of Iranian women in an active role as annotators in building this AI system. Our annotators not only provide labels, but they also suggest valuable keywords for more meaningful corpus creation as well as provide short example documents for a guided sampling step. Our analyses indicate that Mahsa Amini's death triggered polarized Persian language discourse where both fractions of negative and positive tweets toward gender equality increased. The increase in positive tweets was slightly greater than the increase in negative tweets. We also observe that with respect to account creation time, between the state-aligned Twitter accounts and pro-protest Twitter accounts, pro-protest accounts are more similar to baseline Persian Twitter activity.

More than 100 days of nationwide protests in Iran have demonstrated the greatest pushback against the decades-old regime and its repressive policies, showing the world that the people demand rights they have long been denied. Iran has embraced artificial intelligence (AI) as a way to significantly improve its state surveillance networks, allowing the repressive regime to further crack down on perceived offenses. "The Iran regime is certainly joining rogue leaders of the world in redefining and modernizing their modes of suppression," Lisa Daftari, a Middle East expert and editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk, told Fox News Digital. "Unfortunately, just as the Iranian people are finding innovative ways of using social media, streaming and VPNs to get their message out, the regime is also taking advantage of technological advances to continue their reign of brutality." "The regime in Iran is using surveillance technology to identify'transgressors,'" Daftari said.

See how you can help improve AI tools. "Throughout the streets of Iran, courageous voices are declaring "woman, life, freedom" while facing brutal and often deadly attacks. As the global AI community, we stand in support of the Iranian people, many of whom are women and young school girls, demanding their rights against a wave of suppression. In this spirit, we the undersigned, take a stance in amplifying the fearless voices of Iran as they chant: Women, Life, Freedom. We hear you and we are inspired by your courage."

Petrochemical workers strike as demonstrations continue across Iran in defiance of the regime. The European Union sanctioned Iran on Monday for the death of a 22-year-old woman while in custody of the regime's so-called morality police and the subsequent violent crackdown on protests. Numerous Iranian law enforcement officials were added to the sanctions list, including two leaders of the morality police, Mohammad Rostami and Hajahmad Mirzaei. Iran's Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Issa Zarepour, was also sanctioned for his role in censoring the internet and social media during widespread protests over the death of Mahsa Amini. Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, was reportedly murdered by Iran's morality police.