Vietnam tightens controls on social media users
Foreign social media services like YouTube now have to authenticate users by phone number or ID card.
Read more on this topic in Vietnamese.
Vietnam is tightening control over what can be posted on global internet sites such as YouTube by forcing companies to ask for user contact information that authorities can demand they hand over. The move raises concerns about the government’s growing use of the law to crack down on freedom of expression.
The government issued a decree on management, provision and use of the internet and online information on Nov. 9, stipulating that cross-border social media operators such as Meta’s Facebook and Alphabet’s Google have to authenticate accounts by requiring Vietnamese users to provide a mobile phone or personal identification number.
Users have 90 days to comply, after which they won’t be able to post stories, comment, share or livestream on social networks.
The decree also requires businesses providing cross-border information to provide details on Vietnamese users to the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Ministry of Public Security and other relevant authorities upon written request.
Radio Free Asia emailed Google, along with Meta and its Facebook media representatives in Vietnam to ask about the new regulations but did not immediately receive a response.
One Hanoi-based lawyer, who didn’t want to be identified for security reasons, told RFA the new rules would limit freedom of expression in cases where users want to remain anonymous because of “sensitive” political issues.
Poet and journalist Hoang Hung said he was concerned about empowering the Ministry of Information and Communications to determine what content violates its rules, without allowing internet companies and users to seek court arbitration.
Others, including Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates, were more scathing.
“This is a blatant attack on the freedom of speech of Vietnamese people using the Internet,” he told RFA. “It once again shows that Vietnam’s Internet is becoming less and less free and is approaching the situation in China.”
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Vietnam was holding 175 activists as of March for exercising rights including freedom of expression, according to international campaigners Freedom House.
Last month, a court in Hanoi sentenced YouTuber and Facebook blogger Duong Van Thai to 12 years in prison and three years’ probation for “making, storing, disseminating or propagating information, documents, and items aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under Article 117.
Critics say the loosely worded section of the criminal code is used by the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam to silence critics.
Freedom House gave Vietnam 22 out of 100 in its Freedom of the Net index this year, with 100 being the most free.
The new internet decree may also limit the spread of Vietnamese news on Facebook and other platforms. It demands that foreign social networks implement content cooperation agreements with Vietnamese news sites when using their stories, based on intellectual property regulations.
Vietnam is already forcing social media sites to prevent domestic users seeing news reports from foreign organizations, according to the U.S.-based democracy group Viet Tan.
It said about 1,000 posts and videos on its Facebook page were restricted in the first nine months of this year, 80% of them about top Communist Party leaders, including the former general secretary who died this year.
“In particular, discussion about the declining health of Nguyen Phu Trong, who died in July, had the most frequent government takedown requests,” the group said.
“Viet Tan’s Facebook page was also restricted from posting about Vuong Dinh Hue and Pham Minh Chinh,” the group said.
Hue was the chair of the National Assembly until he was forced to resign on April 26 amid a corruption investigation. Chinh is prime minister, one of the four most powerful political positions in Vietnam, who is also facing corruption allegations, the group said.
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.
