Social media giants remove close to 800 ‘anti-state’ posts in Vietnam: State media
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All media is under Vietnamese state control, and government critics with online followings are regularly targeted.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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HANOI - Social media giants YouTube, TikTok and Facebook removed nearly 800 “anti-state” or “false” posts in Vietnam over the course of a month at the request of the communist government, state media said on Friday.
Around 380 YouTube videos, 364 Facebook posts and 33 TikTok links were taken down or blocked between mid-August and mid-September, the state-controlled Thanh Nien newspaper said in a report, quoting the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC).
Some of the posts contained “false and negative... content against the party, state, organisations and individuals... defaming leaders”, the report added.
Vietnam’s communist government tolerates no dissent to one-party rule and social media restrictions
All media is under state control, and government critics with online followings are regularly targeted.
On Thursday, the ministry announced results from an investigation into TikTok, which has an estimated 50 million users in Vietnam.
Earlier in the year, it said it would probe “toxic content”
“TikTok’s content censorship process has not been efficient, bypassing some content that violated Vietnamese laws,” the ministry said in an online statement.
The MIC said the app must take further measures to protect children’s privacy, ensuring it removes all accounts of users aged under 13.
The app says users must be 13 and older to have an account, but the MIC said children below the age limit were still accessing the platform.
The ministry also asked the Vietnamese authorities to closely monitor the “cross-border service activities” of TikTok Singapore, which it said has a hand in managing the app in Vietnam.
TikTok, Meta – Facebook’s parent company – and Google, which owns YouTube, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2020 Amnesty International warned in a major report that Facebook and Google were fast becoming “human rights-free zones” in Vietnam, and accused the tech titans of helping to censor peaceful dissent and political expression in the country. AFP
