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.
Tech companies operating in Vietnam are urged to uphold global human rights standards and to protect the rights of their users amid the continuing state-backed restriction of free speech in the country.
The Vietnamese government stepped up its online censorship as To Lam — general secretary and president of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam — traveled to New York from September 21 to
25, 2024 to address the United Nations Summit of the Future. The former Minister of Public Security also met with world leaders, business groups, and students and faculty at Columbia
University, often stressing the importance of adhering to international law to maintain peace and stability.
The Vietnamese government has traditionally censored the internet by blocking access to foreign-based websites, slowing down internet traffic, and directing technology companies to bar local users from accessing politically sensitive content.
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.”
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.
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.
Facebook has revolutionized how we consume, create, and share information. But it has also increasingly become a tool to suppress the very freedom of expression it was meant to promote, as political actors have manipulated the platform to curtail dissent and harass opponents.
In a new report titled “#StopVNtrolls — Combatting Force 47 and Cyber Censorship”, Viet Tan exposes the harmful networks that have been responsible for coordinated social harm and supressing public discourse in Vietnam. The paper provides recommendations to Meta in order to cultivate a safe and authentic online environment.
Starting around October 20, a sophisticated network of fake Facebook accounts have inundated the comment section of well known Vietnamese Facebook users.
