Vietnam’s HANOI According to official media, the communist government of Vietnam requested that almost 800 “anti-state” or “false” posts be taken down over the course of a month on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.
The state-run Thanh Nien daily said, citing the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC), that between mid-August and mid-September, some 380 YouTube videos, 364 Facebook posts, and 33 TikTok links were removed or restricted.
The study also stated that some of the posts had “false and negative…content against the party, state, organizations, and individuals…defaming leaders.”
No opposition to one-party rule is tolerated in communist Vietnam, and the government uses social media prohibitions to stifle free speech.
Government critics with large online followings frequently get threats because all media is governed by the state.
The findings of the MIC’s probe into TikTok, which has an estimated 50 million Vietnamese users, were released on Thursday.
Earlier this year, it declared that it would look into “toxic content” that was hosted by the wildly popular video-sharing app owned by China.
The MIC stated online that “TikTok’s content censorship process has not been effective, bypassing some content that violated Vietnamese laws.”
The ministry demanded that the app take further precautions to protect children’s privacy, making sure to delete all accounts of users who are younger than 13 years old.
Although the app specifies that users must be 13 or older to have an account, the MIC reported that minors were still using the site.
In addition, the ministry requested that the Vietnamese government keep a careful eye on the “cross-border service activities” of TikTok Singapore, which it said was involved in the app’s management in Vietnam.
Requests for comment from Tiktok, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, and Google, the owner of YouTube, did not immediately receive a response.
Amnesty International issued a significant report in 2020 warning that Facebook and Google were quickly turning into “human rights-free zones” in Vietnam and charged the internet giants with supporting the country’s efforts to restrict peaceful protest and political expression.
