The Quiet Evolution of Vietnam’s Digital Authoritarianism

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November 19, 2022

An annual report by Freedom House recently ranked Vietnam as the fifth worst country in the world for internet freedom. Scoring 22 out of 100, higher only than Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, and China, Vietnam’s positioning remains unchanged from the year before, as the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) continues in its efforts to dominate the country’s digital realm.

Over the last decade, the VCP has been slowly tightening its control over the internet by ramping up online censorship, issuing harsh fines and prison sentences for the supposed misuse of social media, collecting citizens’ online data, and compelling international tech giants to comply with the government’s mounting requirements.

It has been argued that Vietnam is following in China’s footsteps in terms of building its own “national internet,” yet what makes the VCP’s brand of digital authoritarianism different to that of China, Russia, or Iran is the VCP’s tolerance of foreign social media platforms, which have been incorporated into its system of surveillance and information control.

As one of the world’s fastest growing economies, many small and medium-sized enterprises in Vietnam heavily depend on Facebook for their business transactions. Banning foreign social media platforms outright risks upending social and economic behavior in a country that now has one of the highest numbers of Facebook users per population in the world.

Following a lengthy redrafting process, Decree 53 of the aforementioned Cybersecurity Law came into effect on October 1 this year, clarifying the rules that mandate all domestic companies and many foreign companies, including social media platforms, telecommunications services, payment providers, and gaming platforms, to store user data information locally and provide it to authorities upon request.

VIA The Diplomat