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Internet Freedom Campaign
Vital to Vietnam’s development, the Internet has the power to transform Vietnamese society; in many ways it already has. In the absence of an independent media, citizens have turned to the Internet to follow the news and debate national issues.
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Facebook helped bring free speech to Vietnam. Now it’s helping stifle it.
When Facebook took off in Vietnam about a decade ago, it was like a “revolution,” said two of the company’s early employees in Asia. For the first time, people across the country could communicate directly about current affairs. Users posted about police abuse and government waste, poking holes in the propaganda of the ruling Communist Party. “It felt like a liberation,” said one of the Facebook employees, “and we were part of it.”
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The Vietnamese military has a troll army and Facebook is its weapon
Force 47 abuses Facebook’s safety tools to silence government critics at home and anywhere in the world. The military-backed group manipulates Facebook’s moderation tools to silence dissenting speech.
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How Vietnam’s state trolls are undermining free speech and democracy
Vietnam has deployed an army of online trolls and cyber troops who are spreading not just disinformation but also conducting vicious hate campaigns against human rights activists and suspected critics of the state. The extent of the operations of these trolls is detailed in a new report released by the human rights watchdog Viet Tan.
