Vietnam's strict new social media regulations strangle free speech, report says

BANGKOK — New government regulations on social media in Vietnam give authorities increased powers to prevent dissent and control the news, along with the tools to more easily track down critics and silence them, according to an analysis released Tuesday.

Vietnam's authorities implemented ''Decree 147'' in December, tightening regulations on social media companies like Facebook, X, YouTube and TikTok in a bid to further stifle criticism, said Ben Swanton, one of the authors of the report by The 88 Project, a group focused on human rights and free speech issues in Vietnam.

''Any challenge to the government and the Communist Party, any significant challenge to their official narrative of events, is perceived by them as a situation that is getting out of control,'' he said in an interview from Thailand.

Among other things, the decree requires users to verify their accounts with phone numbers or national ID cards that must be provided to the government upon request, and for the social media companies to store their data in Vietnam.

It also prevents social media users from engaging in citizen journalism or posting information about suspected government wrongdoing, and requires companies to remove posts deemed illegal within 24 hours. The decree requires companies to allow authorities access to their internal search engines so that it can identify offending content.

Social media companies have until late March to be in compliance, and it is not yet clear whether they will try to push back. TikTok and Facebook refused to comment on their plans, while X and Google, which owns YouTube, did not return emails.

Already, however, researchers have noticed a decline in political posts, Swanton said.

''In the last several years Hanoi has imprisoned or forced into exile the country's most prominent independent journalists, reformers, human rights activists, and dissidents. This has had a chilling effect that encourages people to engage in self-censorship,'' he said. ''Decree 147 is designed to turn this chilling effect into an icy stranglehold on free speech.''

Vietnamese authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the Project 88 analysis or the intent behind the new decree.

Authorities tighten the screws on critical reporting

About 65 million Vietnamese have Facebook accounts, roughly two-thirds of the population, and some 35 million have YouTube accounts. About half of Vietnam's people say they get most of their news from social media.

Already, the government frequently insists critical posts from outside the country be geo-blocked so they cannot be accessed inside Vietnam and it has moved quickly to censor posts it deems unacceptable, like a video of a top minister eating a gold-encrusted steak in London in 2021 while Vietnam was on COVID-19 lockdown.

In October, a prominent Vietnamese blogger was sentenced to 12 years in prison for articles and videos exposing the corruption of government officials, and in January, a prominent Vietnamese lawyer was sentenced to three years in jail for Facebook posts criticizing the country's former top judge.

Project 88 researchers said the new decree will also give authorities better tools to go after those who just read or watch social media posts as well.

They noted a case last June in which police in one province went through the profiles of 13,328 members of a Facebook group that had information deemed ''hostile to the state'' and identified 20 people in their province, went to their homes and demanded they leave the group.

''If implemented as intended, Decree 147 would likely make it less time consuming to identify members of groups like this and ensure that groups with anti-state content will be blocked in the country,'' the report said.

It urges social media companies and others affected to refuse to comply with provisions of the decree that violate free expression rights, and for the United States and United Nations to pressure Vietnam to repeal the measure.