Viet Tan Statement on Meta’s Geo-Blocking of 17 Leading Facebook Pages in Vietnam
December 4, 2025
As of December 4, 2025, Viet Tan’s Facebook page — and at least 16 other independent voices on the platform — has been geo-blocked for users inside Vietnam at the request of the Vietnamese authorities. This restriction is expected to remain in place at least through the 14th Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party.
This latest act of censorship follows a broader pattern of shrinking space for independent information available to people in Vietnam. With fewer alternative news sources and independent platforms accessible to the public, the regime is seeking to silence the remaining influential opposition voices online in the lead-up to the Party Congress, expected to be held in mid January.
We denounce Meta’s collaboration with an authoritarian government to censor peaceful political expression. In addition to Viet Tan, the blocked accounts include prominent independent journalists and activists such as Le Trung Khoa and Nguyen Van Dai.
For years, the Vietnamese authorities have attempted to suppress Viet Tan’s online presence through fraudulent reports of “community standards” violations and by targeting individual posts. These efforts escalated as our Facebook page continued to grow to more than 2 million followers — most of them inside Vietnam — and reached audiences of up to 20 million views per day. The current geo-blocking confirms what these malicious attacks already signaled: Hanoi fears independent voices and public scrutiny.
Under General To Lam’s leadership, Vietnam’s security services have intensified their campaign of transnational repression, targeting activists abroad — including Y Quynh Bdap (recently refouled from Thailand), Le Trung Khoa, Nguyen Van Dai, and Dang Hue Nhu, among others.
Hanoi’s pressure on Meta, reportedly threatening to throttle the platform and restrict its ability to sell ads in Vietnam, is a coercive action against an American company at a time when Vietnam’s unfair trade practices have received much scrutiny.
Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg announced “it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram.” Meta’s CEO also declared: “we’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world. They’re going after American companies and pushing to censor more.”
Viet Tan calls on Meta to reverse this egregious decision and to seek the US government’s help to uphold its stated commitments to transparency, digital rights, and open civic discourse.
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