Under my thumb: Vietnam tightens screws on foreign tech firms, internet users

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.

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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.

On August 15, the government unveiled Decree 53, the implementing legislation for Vietnam's draconian cybersecurity law.

Originally passed in 2018, the China-like law was never fully implemented and the government simply issued some general guidelines.

Many argued that was sufficient as the law was vaguely worded, like most of Vietnam's national security laws, and the threat of implementation was enough to ensure compliance.

Decree 53 requires data localisation, access to user accounts and personal information, and two-year storage requirements. The latter will allow authorities to define a pattern of "anti-government behaviour" instead of arresting a user over a single post. Decree 53 also requires Western tech firms to have a physical presence in the country, which increases the legal jeopardy of their management.

The implementing legislation has always been contentious. The ministries of national defence and public security have pushed for greater authority to police and restrict cyberspace, seeking greater leverage over Western tech firms. However, the economic ministries worry about the deleterious effect this would have on investment in Vietnam's booming, but mobile, tech sector.

Observers have noted that the government's implementing legislation coincided with the opening of the country's first locally owned data centre, which allegedly counts senior political leaders among its investors. Even if the political elite's vested interests could have played a role, the legislation was one that the security ministries had advocated for years.

Since issuing Decree 53, the government has imposed more restrictions. In one decree issued in November, authorities reduced the time social media firms had to take down any offending posts from 48 to 24 hours. For video content it's within three hours.

These companies already have high rates of compliance - around 90 per cent - in removing "false" or "anti-state" content, according to data from the Ministry of Information and Communications. And why would they not? Vietnam is a US$1 billion market for Meta, Facebook's parent company.

Yet the government expedited the process and raised the costs of non-compliance because it was not confident the tech giants would respond quickly.

The government also tried to reassert control over information flow by limiting individuals to posting only three news items per day. It increased civil penalties, hoping that vigorously enforced fines would serve as a deterrent.

A series of recent high-profile arrests, including that of real estate tycoon Truong My Lan on suspicion of financial fraud, triggered an outpouring of commentary on social media, prompting the government to raise fines in a bid to clamp down on discussion.

The government also announced it would block ads on "toxic" online content and levy fines on corporations advertising on blacklisted sites, including individual Facebook pages or YouTube channels. The Ministry of Information and Communications said companies "must not place ads on content that is toxic, against the state, or infringing copyrights". Given such vague language, authorities are hoping firms will steer clear of anything remotely critical of the government.

In a recent case, a couple who ran an independent news programme on YouTube, "Telling the Truth TV", were arrested for "abusing their democratic freedoms". They were convicted of defaming government officials and "distorting recent high-profile incidents". Authorities routinely go after independent journalists, but seemed genuinely shocked that advertising revenue had earned this couple some US$15,000.

In the past year, 15 firms were fined a token US$8,600 as the government cracked down on such advertising revenue, in a test run to see if it could be implemented on a larger scale.

Unlike other authoritarian regimes, Vietnam's internet is technically open, but not free, with two defining characteristics.

First, the government actively polices the internet. The Ministry of National Defence employs Force 47, a 10,000-man military unit that both promotes the official government narrative by influencing and amplifying, and acting as "red bull" trolls to harass and intimidate dissenting voices.

The Ministry of Public Security has its own division monitoring the internet.

Vietnam has learned from China how to flood Twitter, Facebook and other social media with nuisance content to dilute material deemed harmful by the regime.

Second, the government has spent an inordinate amount of resources trying to develop filters to regulate content.

While Vietnamese authorities could not block out all the news about the zero-Covid protests in China, that the government was able to keep so much of it offline suggests its ability to filter internet traffic is better than previously believed.

Vietnam is unlikely to build anything similar to the Great Firewall of China. Its internet will remain open and Western social media firms will continue to operate there, as the bulk of the online economy relies on these companies. Its market size and high growth potential mean such firms are likely to continue complying with government dictates.

The government is pushing through a swathe of measures, fines and legal restrictions to encourage self-censorship, content removal and compliance. But this has consequences.

At 7.5 per cent, Vietnam's economy is the fastest growing in Southeast Asia. The tech industry has been one of the drivers of the private sector and the government hopes that it will account for 30 per cent of gross domestic product by 2030. But the tech sector is very mobile, and the government's penchant for control is bad not only for the free flow of information, but also for sustained economic growth.

Zachary Abuza is a Professor at the National War College in Washington DC, where he focuses on Southeast Asian politics and security issues. His views are his alone and do not reflect the opinions of the National War College or US Department of Defence.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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