Blocking and Filtering

With fewer resources devoted to online content control than in China, the Vietnamese authorities have nevertheless established an effective content filtering system. Social media and communications apps are periodically blocked, but Facebook and Instagram, which were blocked during protests in May 2016, were otherwise available during the coverage period.

Access to Facebook and Instagram appears to have been interrupted as hundreds of people protested against an environmental disaster in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in May 2016. Demonstrators criticized Formosa, a Taiwanese steel plant they held responsible for millions of fish washing up dead along the central coast, and the government for failing to respond to the crisis. The mainstream media failed to cover the rallies, adding to Facebook’s importance as a means of sharing information and organizing public events (see “Digital Activism”). Operators of at least three tools used to circumvent blocking reported a dramatic spike in the number of their Vietnamese users on May 15, coinciding with reports that social media platforms were inaccessible and indicating that the platforms had been blocked.¹¹ Some mobile users also reported that they were unable to send SMS messages about the rallies.

Censorship is implemented by ISPs rather than at the backbone or international gateway level. Specific URLs are generally identified for censorship and placed on blacklists. Censorship targets high-profile blogs or websites with many followers, as well as content considered threatening to Communist Party rule, including political dissent, human rights and democracy, as well as websites criticizing the government’s reaction to border and sea disputes with China. Content promoting organized religion such as Buddhism, Roman Catholicism, and the Cao Dai group, which the state considers a potential threat, is blocked to a lesser but still significant degree. Websites critical of the government are generally inaccessible, whether they are hosted overseas, such as Talawas, Dan Luan and Dan Chim Viet, or domestically, like Dan Lam Bao, Dien Dan Xa Hoi Dan Su, or Bauxite Vietnam. Access to international sites such as Human Rights Watch, U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese-language site, or Vietnamese BBC, has been unstable and unpredictable.

ISPs use different techniques to inform customers of their compliance with blocking orders. While some notify users when an inaccessible site has been deliberately blocked, others post an apparently benign error message.

Content Removal

The Party’s Department for Culture and Ideology and the Ministry of Information and Culture (MIC) regularly instruct online outlets to remove content they perceive as problematic, through nontransparent, often verbal orders.

In February 2017, the government tightened pressure on international companies to remove content the authorities categorized as “toxic.” The Vietnam-based operations of several multinational companies withdrew advertising from popular social media platforms Facebook and YouTube at the request of Vietnamese government ministries.¹²Vietnamese companies also pulled advertising after government representatives said the advertising appeared next to content violating local laws, including some uploaded by dissidents that criticized the government.¹³ The impact of the measure on content was not immediately clear. State media said officials had asked YouTube to remove thousands of clips, but Google, which owns YouTube, was quoted as saying it had received fewer than 50 official takedown requests, and reported only 5 total government removal requests between 2009 and December 2016 in its transparency report.¹⁴

Other entities with financial and political influence may exert control over online content or discourage free expression. In 2016, online reports of inadequate animal welfare at a safari on Phu Quoc island in southern Vietnam, led to a Facebook campaign questioning the importation and treatment of wild animals. The Vinpearl safari is operated by Vingroup, one of the country’s biggest conglomerates. Shortly afterward, Facebook users who had previously discussed the issue temporarily deactivated their accounts, and a Facebook page administrator posted that they had to stop reporting on the case “for security reasons,” according to the BBC Vietnamese service, leading observers to believe that they feared reprisals from Vingroup or its supporters.¹⁵ Vingroup denied reports that thousands of animals had died at the park and workers had quit in protest.¹⁶ In 2017, other activists who posted on Facebook about Vingroup’s real estate projects in Hanoi removed content in similar circumstances.

Content removal instructions cover social as well as political content. In 2015, for example, MIC officials ordered local media production company Monday Morning Ltd. Co. to stop producing episodes of the YouTube celebrity gossip series “Bitches in Town,” for using offensive language and causing public outrage.¹⁷

Intermediary liability was formalized in 2013 with Decree 72 on the Management, Provision, Use of Internet Services and Internet Content Online. It requires intermediaries—including those based overseas—to regulate third-party contributors in cooperation with the state, and to “eliminate or prevent information” prohibited under Article 5. It holds cybercafe owners responsible if their customers are caught surfing “bad” websites. This process was articulated in Circular 09/2014/TT-BTTTT, issued in October 2014, which requires website owners to eliminate “incorrect” content “within three hours” of its detection or receipt of a request from a competent authority in the form of email, text message, or phone call. The circular also tightened procedures for registering and licensing new social media sites. Among other requirements, the person responsible for the platform should have a university or higher degree. It also requires Vietnamese companies who operate general websites and social networks, including blogging platforms, to locate a server system in Vietnam and to store posted information for 90 days and certain metadata for up to two years.¹⁸ It is not clear how much service providers removed content for fear of possible reprisals before the decree was introduced, so its immediate impact was not possible to gauge. Further, it did not outline clear penalties for non-compliance.

Media, Diversity and Content Manipulation

Internet content producers face a range of pressures that affect the quality of online information. All content needs to pass through in-house censorship before publication. In weekly meetings, detailed instructions handed out by a Party Committee to editors dictate areas and themes to report on or suppress, as well as the allowed depth of coverage. In 2017, President Tran Dai Quang called for new measures “to prevent news sites and blogs with bad and dangerous content,” but none had been introduced in mid-year.¹⁹

Editors and journalists also risk post-publication sanctions including imprisonment, fines, disciplinary warnings, and job loss. On June 20, 2016, an announcement on the MIC website said the ministry had revoked press credentials for Mai Phan Loi, head of the Hanoi bureau of the HCMC Law Newspaper, based on the online publication of a single word deemed “not respectful to the military.” Loi had discussed the crash of a Vietnamese maritime patrol aircraft in a journalists’ group on Facebook the previous week. The post asked why the plane had “exploded into pieces.”²⁰ On June 21, Minister of Information and Communications Truong Minh Tuan warned that journalists should be considerate when using social networks. ²¹

Decree 174, effective since January 2014, introduced administrative fines of up to VND 100 million (US$4,700) for anyone who “criticizes the government, the Party or national heroes” or “spreads propaganda and reactionary ideology against the state” on social media. These fines can be applied for offenses not serious enough to merit criminal prosecution. The decree outlined additional fines for violations related to online commerce. In 2015, the Ministry of Information and Communications reported imposing VND 777 million ($38,000) in 18 cases involving violations of rules governing the provision and use of information on the internet.²² The local government in southwestern An Giang province was forced to withdraw one sanction that attracted national attention in 2015. A secondary school teacher was fined VND 5 million ($220) for describing the provincial chairman as “arrogant” on Facebook. Two other individuals were fined and received disciplinary warnings from the Party for “liking” and sharing the post. The incident attracted dozens of media representatives to press conferences before the fines were withdrawn.²³

These economic and social penalties, in addition to the risk of criminal prosecution, foster self-censorship. The unpredictable and nontransparent ways in which topics become prohibited make it difficult for users to know what might be off-limits, and bloggers and forum administrators routinely disable commenting functions to prevent controversial discussions.

The government has also taken steps to manipulate public opinion online. In 2013, Hanoi's head of propaganda Ho Quang Loi revealed the city has a 900-strong team of "internet polemicists" or "public opinion shapers" who are tasked with spreading the party line. The "teams of experts" had set up some 18 websites and 400 online accounts to monitor and direct online discussions on everything from foreign policy to land rights, he said at the time.²⁴ There were no official statements regarding this matter in 2017, but internet users continued to observe signs of possible manipulation in online forums.

In October 2015, the government opened an official Facebook page to provide timely information about the government and the prime minister.²⁵ Other government agencies, such as the Ministry of Health or the Hanoi People’s Committee have also started to reach out to citizens on Facebook, apparently signaling a shift away from the perception of such platforms as oppositional, towards more digital engagement for propaganda purposes and improving governance.

Although government-run media continue to dominate, new domestic online outlets and social media sites are expanding the traditional media landscape. Young educated Vietnamese are increasingly turning to blogs, social media, and other online news sources over state TV and radio.²⁶ While some important alternative blogs have stopped operating following the prosecution of their owners, like Que Choa in 2014, new Facebook pages and other sites continue to emerge. In 2015, independent broadcaster Conscience TV began producing YouTube videos on human rights issues in Vietnam.²⁷ Tools for circumventing censorship are well known among younger, technology-savvy internet users in Vietnam, and many can be found with a simple Google search.²⁸

Activists continued to use social media during the reporting period, some with tens of thousands of followers, even in the face of intensifying pressure (see “Content Removal” and “Prosecutions and Detentions for Online Activities”).²⁹ In mid-2016, Mai Khoi, a singer who ran for the National Assembly as an independent member, described social media as the only platform where she could speak freely, though she also said her Facebook account had been disabled twice during her campaign. She suspected that individuals aligned with the security forces reported her account to Facebook in order to silence her.³⁰

Digital Activism

Digital mobilization is local rather than national in scale, compared to some other countries in Asia. In 2016, the mass deaths of fish in central coastal provinces sparked a wave of protest on Facebook, which led to street rallies in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City demanding more transparency from the government.³¹ The protests continued through October 2016 and proved to be a challenge to the government on how to deal with crisis.³² Facebook was restricted when the protests were at their peak (see “Blocking and Filtering”).

In March 2015, a Hanoi government plan to remove thousands of trees lining the city’s thoroughfares spawned outrage on Facebook in a campaign which gathered 20,000 supporters in 24 hours, some of whom speculated that officials were motivated by the chance of selling the valuable timber. Authorities reversed the plan later that month, after a rare protest where residents took to the streets following several online campaigns by different social groups.³³ The previous year, a plan to build a cable car near the UN-recognized world-heritage site Phong Nha-Ke Bang was also stalled by Facebook critics whose page amassed over 33,000 likes, and a petition of over 71,000 signatures.³⁴