The results of an inspection into TikTok earlier this year by Vietnam’s Ministry of Communications (MIC) listed nine points that the company needed to address in order to be compliant with Vietnamese regulations but it has only complied with four so far, Saigon News is reporting.
Those four are:
- strengthening child protection measures,
- addressing copyright concerns,
- coordinating and communicating with Vietnam’s authorities on policy, and
- (Note: the fourth point is not reported).
Of the remaining five, TikTok is still in discussions on four including:
- blocking content violating Vietnamese law,
- improving information scanning tools, and
- improving content moderation systems, specifically live streaming, and
- copyright protections for content created by the local press.
TikTok has declined to accept the final point which is to authorise the Vietnamese authorities to manage and address content violations on the platform.
Context: Earlier this year, the MIC launched an investigation into TikTok as part of a wider move to bring social media services under its control. This was in line with Vietnam’s Cybersecurity Law and the Personal Data Protection Decree, the first requiring cross-border service providers to open a local office and the latter requiring the data of Vietnamese users to be stored in Vietnam.