Plurality in the Persian-speaking world

How *Plurality* is being read in the Persian-speaking world is almost entirely unknown. No translation was found, and no reporting on Tang or Weyl could be retrieved. What can be seen is reporting on Community Notes, and conversations in which getting around censorship is the topic.

In countries where the government shuts down or censors the internet, the first problem is not digital tools for talking things over and deciding together, but simply being able to get online at all. Iran, where Persian is spoken, is a country often named in such discussions. How has the book Plurality by Audrey Tang of Taiwan (آدری تانگ in Persian) and E. Glen Weyl (گلن ویل) been received in the Persian-speaking world?

In short

For now, the answer is: almost nothing is known. The survey for this article found no Persian translation of the book [1]. Nor could it retrieve any Persian-language reporting that mentions Tang, Weyl or the book.

Two things can be seen. One is articles in which media inside Iran reported on X's (formerly Twitter's) Community Notes. The other is English-language records of events Tang took part in where getting around censorship in Iran came up. However, most Persian-language media outside Iran could not be searched. It cannot be concluded that the book is unknown in Iran.

For example

A conference in Berlin (November 10, 2025). At the Berlin Freedom Conference, held in Berlin, a panel followed Tang's talk. There, a panelist who is an Iranian-born technologist and human rights activist spoke about experiences in Iran. At the time of the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement, despite the punishments for using VPNs and satellite internet, people found ways to bring in Starlink and chip away at the wall of censorship bit by bit [3].

At the same event, Damon Wilson of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) said that tools built for Iran in Silicon Valley or Washington might miss the mark. The view was that Iranian technologists working inside the country and in exile will find their own way [3].

An article on Musk's post (February 21, 2025). Digiato (دیجیاتو), a media outlet inside Iran, reported on a post by Elon Musk on X saying that Community Notes would be fixed. The article translates Musk's post as "متاسفانه Community Notes به بازیچه دولت‌ها و رسانه‌ها بدل گشته است" (unfortunately, Community Notes has become a plaything of governments and the media) [4].

Gen Z and Taiwan (November 7, 2025). In a blog on Khabaronline, a lawyer, university lecturer and researcher in children's international law (according to the signature at the end) discussed Gen Z and the right to decide for oneself in the digital age. As one example, the post mentions Taiwan in a single sentence: "و در تایوان، نظامی از دموکراسی دیجیتال پدید آمد که شهروندان از طریق سامانه‌های آنلاین در تدوین قوانین مشارکت می‌کنند" (and in Taiwan, a system of digital democracy emerged in which citizens take part in drafting laws through online systems). Neither Tang nor vTaiwan is named [5].

In more detail

On translation

The book has 160 "forks" on GitHub (copies that others have made in order to work on them) (a provisional count by this site, October 2026). None of them contains a Persian (persian or farsi) directory. Persian (fa) is also absent from the list of languages (13 languages) on the book's site, plurality.net. A GitHub repository search also returned 0 results [1].

What about Weyl's earlier book Radical Markets? The Persian Wikipedia article "گلن ویل" lists the book with its title translated as "بازارهای رادیکال". But the bibliographic details given are the ISBN of the English edition from Princeton University Press, not those of a Persian edition [2]. Searches of Iranian bookshop sites gave no clear result, and Google Books could not be searched because of a usage limit. So it cannot be said that there is no translation. → Radical Markets

Community Notes as reported by media inside Iran

Community Notes is a system in which users write notes on misleading posts, and whether a note is shown is decided by other users' ratings. → Community Notes

Digiato and Khabaronline reported the following:

The CEO of X welcomed Meta's adoption of Community Notes (January 2025) [6]
Musk's post saying that Community Notes would be fixed (February 2025) [4]
Meta ending fact-checking in the United States and moving to Community Notes (April 2025, from a Zoomit article) [7]
A new feature that also notifies you by DM (direct message) when a note is later added to a post you interacted with (July 2026) [8]

All the articles write "Community Notes" without translating the name. Their explanation of the mechanism goes no further than users writing notes and voting on whether they are helpful. These four articles do not explain the mechanism that combines ratings from people with different positions to decide what is shown (bridging) [4][7].

The July 2026 article cites a study in the journal Nature Communications. According to the study, corrections by notes do reduce how far posts spread, but they usually come too late and miss the early stage of diffusion [8]. The title of the Persian Wikipedia article, incidentally, is "کامیونیتی نوتز", a transliteration of the sound [9].

Taiwan and disinformation

In February 2026, Digiato reported on a paper in the journal Science warning that swarms of AI bots could deceive public opinion. The article introduced a report that early forms of these were used in the 2024 elections in Taiwan, India and Indonesia, and also carried remarks by Puma Shen (沈伯洋), a legislator of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party. Tang's name does not appear in this article either [10].

Iran in the records of Tang's conversations

Iran also appears in some records of Tang's conversations (in English).

Tools for freedom and tools for democracy (March 21, 2024). An interviewer from the Global Taiwan Institute asked whether the censorship-circumvention tools the United States has built for countries such as Iran have been successful. Tang's answer was this. These are tools for free communication, assembly and speech, but not necessarily tools for democracy. Supporting fundamental freedoms online is worthwhile, but if you stop at that level, it is not very effective. Unless people organize using those tools and shape public beliefs through discussion, that alone is not very effective [11].

"halal internet" (October 18, 2023). In a conversation with Tang, Yasmin Green of Jigsaw said that in countries such as Iran, China and Russia, the main task is first getting people access to the internet. Green went on to say that such countries already have an internet that fits their governing ideology, and that Iran is heading towards a "halal internet". These are Green's words, not Tang's [12].

The TED2026 session on Community Notes (April 14, 2026). The people behind Community Notes presented an example of a note added to an AI-generated image used in a post about Iran. They also said that during the "Iran conflict", synthetic video and images had surged [13].

What is debated

It cannot be said that the book is unknown in Iran. Among Persian-language media outside Iran, the site search of BBC Persian and IranWire could not be used. Site searches of Radio Farda and VOA Persian returned 0 results (a provisional count by this site, October 2026). No relevant articles could be retrieved from any of these outlets. Persian-language Google News could not be used either. In other words, much remained out of reach of the search.
Deliberation in communities abroad. No source was found showing that, since 2022, Iranians living abroad have deliberated using tools like Polis. This article does not say either that it happened or that it did not.
The framing of domestic media belongs to those outlets. Each article reflects its own outlet's framing, not Iranian public opinion itself. For example, Digiato wrote that Meta's decision to move to Community Notes can be seen as part of a decision by Zuckerberg to move closer to the Trump camp. The same article also mentions criticism based on a report by the CCDH: that many misleading posts on X can be seen a very large number of times without any note attached [6].

Where it fits in Plurality

The survey for this article did not check where, if anywhere, the book deals with Iran. What the sources here touch on is the layer of the freedom to connect (getting around censorship), which comes before the book's central ideas, and reporting on Community Notes.

Tang's remark distinguishing tools for freedom from tools for democracy [11] offers a clue for thinking about the difference between digital democracy and Taiwan's digital democracy.

Articles on other countries and regions:

Plurality in the Arabic-speaking world
Plurality in Israel
Plurality in Sweden — another case where no translation was found

Sources

List of forks of the book's repository — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/forks ［CC0］
Persian Wikipedia, "گلن ویل" — https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%DA%AF%D9%84%D9%86_%D9%88%DB%8C%D9%84
Berlin Freedom Conference: The Role of AI (2025-11-10) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2025-11-10-Berlin-Freedom-Conference-The-Role-Of-AI.md ［CC0］
Digiato, "ایلان ماسک می‌خواهد ویژگی Community Notes شبکه اجتماعی ایکس را اصلاح کند" (Elon Musk wants to fix X's Community Notes feature) (2025-02-21, in Persian) — https://digiato.com/app/elon-musk-wants-to-fix-community-notes-on-x
Khabaronline, "نسل زد و بیداری دیجیتال؛ دموکراسی در عصر پلتفرم‌ها" (Gen Z and digital awakening: democracy in the age of platforms) (2025-11-07, in Persian) — https://www.khabaronline.ir/news/2132059/
Digiato, "مدیرعامل ایکس از تصمیم متا برای استفاده از Community Notes استقبال کرد" (X's CEO welcomed Meta's decision to use Community Notes) (2025-01-08, in Persian) — https://digiato.com/app/ceo-x-welcomed-metas-decision-to-add-community-notes
Khabaronline, "کپی‌برداری زاکربرگ از ایکس" (Zuckerberg copies X) (2025-04-05, in Persian) — https://www.khabaronline.ir/news/2045458/
Khabaronline, "ایکس بروزرسانی شد / تغییر بزرگ چیست؟" (X has been updated: what is the big change?) (2026-07-09, in Persian) — https://www.khabaronline.ir/news/2243988/
Persian Wikipedia, "کامیونیتی نوتز" — https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%DA%A9%D8%A7%D9%85%DB%8C%D9%88%D9%86%DB%8C%D8%AA%DB%8C_%D9%86%D9%88%D8%AA%D8%B2
Digiato, "هشدار محققان: بات‌ها در شبکه‌های اجتماعی می‌توانند افکار عمومی را فریب دهند" (Researchers warn: bots on social networks can deceive public opinion) (2026-02-16, in Persian) — https://digiato.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-bot-swarms-threaten-democracy
Conversation with Global Taiwan Institute (2024-03-21) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2024-03-21-Conversation-with-Global-Taiwan-Institute.md ［CC0］
Conversation with Yasmin Green and Örkesh Dölet (2023-10-18) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2023-10-18-Conversation-with-Yasmin-Green-and-%C3%96rkesh-D%C3%B6let.md ［CC0］
How Community Notes Reduce Viral Misinformation (TED2026, 2026-04-14) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2026-04-14-How-Community-Notes-Reduce-Viral-Misinformation.md ［CC0］

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