‘It’s really Orwellian’: Has Dubai’s social media crackdown killed the influencer dream for good?
It was the influencer capital of the world, a photogenic playground for the young, glamorous and wealthy. But as Iranian missiles fall on Dubai, the largest and most ostentatiously luxe city in the United Arab Emirates, the facade seems about to crack.
The city once touted as one of the safest places in the world is no longer a peaceful haven. And the UAE government has rushed to try and control the narrative, prompting a huge crackdown on anyone sharing photos of missile attacks and their aftermath. Instead, content creators have been posting uncannily similar photos and videos full of praise, parroting buzzwords about the city’s strong, stable leaders.
How can influencers continue to portray the “Dubai dream” online, when the whole world knows that the city has been mired in conflict? And what about the ordinary people who are being detained for sharing photos and videos that go against the official line?
Radha Stirling is the founder and CEO of Detained in Dubai, the organisation that provides legal assistance to foreigners dealing with legal injustice and travel bans. The authorities, she says, are “arresting first, asking questions later” in a way that feels unprecedented.
“We’ve never seen, I think, people rounded up as they have in this current climate, where you happen to be in the vicinity of an explosion and the police turn up at your doorstep the next day and say, ‘You were around this explosion yesterday. Can I have a look at your phone please?’”
The case that Stirling is alluding to made headlines earlier this week, when three people who survived a drone strike on their apartment building were allegedly arrested after privately sharing a photo with family members, simply to confirm that they were alive.
“They scroll through your messages, see that you sent a photo to your mum or something like that, and suddenly you’re arrested,” Stirling says. “That’s not down to national security. Plus, those images [of strikes] had already been in the international media, so there’s a lot of confusion.”
It is a situation she describes as “really Orwellian – when you’ve got survivors of drone strikes being taken into custody and treated in that way, when there’s obviously no ill intent”.
A 60-year-old British tourist has also been charged under cyber crime laws after allegedly filming Iranian missiles over the city; he was one of more than 20 people charged together, according to Detained in Dubai.
In cases like these, Stirling says, often “people are grouped together after just interacting with something that’s been published by someone else”. Something as seemingly innocuous as forwarding a video or interacting with an Instagram post could result in detention. “You see a picture of a hotel on fire, you press reshare and suddenly you’re a criminal as well,” Stirling says.
Despite wanting to attract western visitors, UAE has some of the world’s strictest laws around freedom of speech and expression. While it may feel like an anathema to someone brought up in a democratic country, there, any criticism of the government, state policies or the royal family is strictly prohibited. Cyber crime legislation effectively criminalises the posting or sharing of any content seen to harm the state’s reputation.
The rules are also notoriously “broad, grey, subjective and open to any interpretation”, Stirling argues. “I think they’re designed that way to give maximum freedom and flexibility to the authorities to charge [people with] whatever they want.”
In 2023, for example, Craig Ballentine, a man from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, was arrested upon arriving at Abu Dhabi airport after posting a negative Google review about a former employer in Dubai. Ballentine was accused of slander and faced jail time, but was eventually allowed to return home a few months later.
Cases like these have drawn international media attention to the UAE’s stringent regulations around social media and free speech. And yet, prior to this latest conflict in the Middle East at least, this doesn’t seem to have put off migrants: in 2024, relocation firm John Mason International Movers revealed that over the previous five years, it received a 420 per cent increase in enquiries from British nationals hoping to move to Dubai.
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