Vietnam’s National Assembly has passed a law that will add additional regulations to social media networks including verifying the identity of Vietnamese users, collecting and storing their information, as well as enhancing content monitoring and compliance in line with government regulations. The new Decree takes effect from December 25 this year.
Of note, the new Decree has sparked interest from abroad on the grounds that it will largely apply to cross border service providers and looks a lot like it is designed to crack down on anti-government speech, and this is probably true. However, it’s also worth noting that social media has become central to a huge amount of trade in Vietnam.
Selling goods (and a lot of goods) through Facebook, Tik-Tok, and homegrown messaging app Zalo has become very common. Collecting taxes from vendors using these platforms, however, has been challenging–or at least in the local press it has been portrayed as such–not to mention they have also become a key means to sell supplements with bogus health claims as well as to raised funds through any number of scams.
That is not to justify these changes, simply to provide some additional context beyond the obvious.
This is also not particularly new but rather fits in line with a number of other similar regulations that have been implemented over the last few years.