August 23, 2019, By Vietnam Weekly
Tuoi Tre reports that the Ministry of Information and Communications has told the National Assembly that Facebook and Google must open offices in Vietnam and store personal data locally. The ministry has been saying this for a while, and of course these stipulations are part of the controversial Cybersecurity Law (which remains extremely murky). Officials are annoyed that the two tech giants don't take down every 'sensitive' item that they ask for, though the article says both companies have set up "cooperative mechanisms exclusively for Vietnam."
January 1, 2020 is when international tech firms are supposed to begin compliance with the above rules, but there aren't any guidelines on what will happen if they don't.
Meanwhile, according to Reuters, Facebook has stepped up its content restrictions in Vietnam. The information minister says that they now meet up to 75% of the government's take-down requests, compared to 30% in the past, while in May, Facebook said that the amount of content it restricted here grew by over 500% in the latter part of 2018.
It seems that Facebook, at least, is likely trying to do what it can to avoid pressure to set up an office - but will it be enough?
And, following the launch of a Vietnamese social media platform called Gapolate last month, VCCorp is preparing to release a network of their own calledLotus (my, how creative). The founders of both platforms have huge ambitions, but putting a dent in Facebook's massive reach is a tall order.
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