Vietnam government warns it would shut down Facebook over political content
The Vietnamese government has threatened to shut down Facebook in the country if the US social media giant does not abide by government requests to remove local political content on its platform, Reuters reported, citing a Facebook official.
Facebook complied with a government request in April to significantly increase its censorship of “anti-state” posts for local users, but Vietnam asked the company again in August to step up its restrictions.
“They have come back to us and sought to get us to increase the volume of content that we’re restricting in Vietnam,” the official said.
“We’ve told them no. That request came with some threats about what might happen if we didn’t,” the person added.
The threats included shutting down Facebook altogether in Vietnam, a major market for the social media company where it earns revenue of nearly $1 billion, according to two sources familiar with the numbers.
Facebook, which serves about 60 million users in Vietnam as the main platform for both e-commerce and expressions of political dissent, is under constant government scrutiny.
Home-grown alternatives to Facebook unsuccessful
Vietnam has tried to launch home-grown social media networks to compete with Facebook, but none has reached any meaningful level of popularity.
Vietnam’s foreign ministry said in response to questions from Reuters that Facebook should abide by local laws and cease “spreading information that violates traditional Vietnamese customs and infringes upon state interests.”
On the other hand, Facebook has long faced criticism from rights group for being too compliant with government censorship requests.
Currently, the only countries to ban access to Facebook completely are China, Iran, Syria and North Korea.
The Vietnamese government has threatened to shut down Facebook in the country if the US social media giant does not abide by government requests to remove local political content on its platform, Reuters reported, citing a Facebook official. Facebook complied with a government request in April to significantly increase its censorship of “anti-state” posts for local users, but Vietnam asked the company again in August to step up its restrictions. “They have come back to us and sought to get us to increase the volume of content that we’re restricting in Vietnam,” the official said. “We’ve told them no. That...
The Vietnamese government has threatened to shut down Facebook in the country if the US social media giant does not abide by government requests to remove local political content on its platform, Reuters reported, citing a Facebook official.
Facebook complied with a government request in April to significantly increase its censorship of “anti-state” posts for local users, but Vietnam asked the company again in August to step up its restrictions.
“They have come back to us and sought to get us to increase the volume of content that we’re restricting in Vietnam,” the official said.
“We’ve told them no. That request came with some threats about what might happen if we didn’t,” the person added.
The threats included shutting down Facebook altogether in Vietnam, a major market for the social media company where it earns revenue of nearly $1 billion, according to two sources familiar with the numbers.
Facebook, which serves about 60 million users in Vietnam as the main platform for both e-commerce and expressions of political dissent, is under constant government scrutiny.
Home-grown alternatives to Facebook unsuccessful
Vietnam has tried to launch home-grown social media networks to compete with Facebook, but none has reached any meaningful level of popularity.
Vietnam’s foreign ministry said in response to questions from Reuters that Facebook should abide by local laws and cease “spreading information that violates traditional Vietnamese customs and infringes upon state interests.”
On the other hand, Facebook has long faced criticism from rights group for being too compliant with government censorship requests.
Currently, the only countries to ban access to Facebook completely are China, Iran, Syria and North Korea.
