Asian Angle | Under my thumb: Vietnam tightens screws on foreign tech firms, internet users
- Vietnam has issued a series of regulations aimed at ensuring social media firms’ maximum compliance with government dictates
- Its efforts to assert control, regulate content could have consequences for Vietnam’s mobile tech sector and sustained economic growth
The Vietnamese government has passed a new law that bans advertisers from proscribed websites and social media channels, the latest in a string of regulations that are meant to assert control over the internet, which the bulk of the population relies on to live.
Unlike China which runs an intranet behind a firewall and precludes foreign social media firms from accessing its domestic market, Vietnam’s internet is open and dominated by Western social media platforms. That has always been a conundrum for the country’s ruling Communist Party, which is obsessed with control and maintaining its monopoly on power.
Some 80 per cent of Vietnam’s 98 million people use the internet. Facebook alone has more than 60 million in-country users. Mistrust of state-controlled media is high among Vietnamese, who have long relied on social media platforms for information.
Hanoi cannot shut down platforms like YouTube or Facebook – the core of the country’s burgeoning e-commerce market – but has worked assiduously to bring the tech giants under its thumb through recent laws and decrees, and an army of “red bull” trolls.
Draconian cybsecurity legislation
On August 15, the government unveiled Decree 53, the implementing legislation for Vietnam’s draconian cybersecurity law.
