How tech companies enable censorship in Vietnam
A Facebook post which has a caption of “Secretary-President To on the tightrope” was censored in Vietnam. Source: Facebook post of Viet Tan, used with permission.
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 has long censored criticism and silenced dissenters — particularly those in online spaces. As Human Rights Watch (HRW) notes, “Political dissidents and human rights activists face systematic harassment, intimidation, arbitrary arrest, abuses in custody, and imprisonment.”
Now, international tech companies are being caught in the middle, forced to choose between assisting government censorship or upholding basic digital and human rights.
A report by Legal Initiatives for Vietnam evaluated the response of tech companies such as Meta/Facebook, Google, Netflix, TikTok, and Apple to the Vietnamese government’s requests for content moderation and access to users’ data. While the tech companies largely refused the government's requests to access users’ data, Legal Initiatives for Vietnam found a 90 percent compliance rate in requests for content moderation.
The report flagged the censorship of government criticism.
Our findings show a concerning situation where these companies almost always comply with an increasing number of content moderation requests from the Vietnamese government, with the compliance rate consistently above 90 percent over the years, including geographical restrictions and content removals. At the same time, the government and some tech companies acknowledge that a significant portion of the restricted or removed content is government criticism, which is protected speech under international human rights law.
Meta, specifically, maintains a secret list of officials who cannot be criticized on Facebook, according to Legal Initiatives for Vietnam's reporting. This was reiterated in a separate report by human rights watchdog Viet Tan which revealed that over 100 pieces of their content were blocked in Vietnam when Vietnamese politician To Lam, currently the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, visited the United States in September.
2/3) It details Meta's compliance with government requests to block content critical of Vietnam’s leadership, including political cartoons and discussions of internal power struggles. The report criticizes the lack of transparency and due process in content moderation, urging … pic.twitter.com/k5xGm4R0Ow
— Viet Tan (@viettan) October 2, 2024
It asked Meta to consider the following in addressing the Vietnamese people’s right to information:
Since the Vietnamese government considers all content by activists’ groups as ‘sensitive’ and potentially violating local law, Meta needs to better articulate how it determines when content should be censored for local users. For example, will an informal request from Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communications be sufficient? Or should the request also be accompanied by a court order? And what if the underlying content merely expresses a widely held political opinion?
This is not the first time that Viet Tan has called out Meta for complying with “unjust and arbitrary” government requests. In an e-mail interview with this author, Viet Tan’s advocacy director, Michel Tran Duc, shares their plan for holding the company accountable in the United States.
We have raised Meta’s content takedown and restrictions, urging the company to be transparent about their process for blocking content at the request of the government. The next step is to involve members of Congress to hold Meta accountable for their collaboration with the Vietnamese government to censor free speech, and continue to raise awareness through reports of censorship actions that counter Meta’s commitment to its Corporate Human Rights Policy and membership in the Global Network Initiative.
Asked if the selection of a new president would lead to reforms, Michel Tran Duc highlighted the notorious human rights record of the country’s top officials.
The former was a police general, and the current one is an army general. There is no sign that human rights and freedom of the press will be better respected in Vietnam after the change in office. Only domestic and international pressure can advance these rights in Vietnam.
For its part, Legal Initiatives for Vietnam recommended in its report that tech companies resist illegitimate government requests, protect user data, remove cyber troops and trolls that manipulate online discussion, and support the work of human rights defenders.