Vietnam has announced a probe into TikTok’s operations citing “a threat to the country’s youth, culture and tradition” posed by “toxic” content on the popular short-video platform.
According to Vietnam’s information ministry, moderating content on TikTok is “far more difficult” than on other platforms. It says removing “toxic” content from the platform will not suffice and stricter measures are needed to fight it. The ministry’s plans as to how the content is going to be regulated have not been laid out yet, however.
It is important to mention that Vietnam received a low ranking (16/60) in the Freedom in the World 2022 report by Freedom House, which said freedom of expression and civil society activism are “tightly restricted” in the communist state.
The ministry did not rule out the possibility of a ban against TikTok in case of non-compliance with state regulations. “TikTok, Facebook and YouTube are all cross-border social media with international standards,” said a ministry representative. “But when operating in Vietnam, the platform needs to abide by local regulations on both content and tax obligations.”
They added TikTok recently allowed “toxic, offensive, false and superstitious” content.
TikTok has about 50 million users in Vietnam, as per statistics by research firm DataReportal. The app took down 1.7 million videos from the Vietnamese market in the fourth quarter of 2022 for violating its community guidelines. The removed media was considered to have breached policies set by the government, DataReportal said.
In response to the probe, TikTok confirmed to Reuters that it had updated its guidelines, which will come into force from April 21. It said the company will be more transparent about its rules and how they enforced.
The investigation into “toxic” content arrives at the heels of Australia’s decision to ban TikTok from government-issued devices. Australia, which joined last week the growing list of countries cracking down on TikTok, disclosed that the decision to ban the app was taken following advice from security and intelligence agencies. The directive would be imposed “as soon as practicable”.
TikTok has already been the focus of intense regulatory scrutiny since its parent company ByteDance confirmed that some of its staff based in China could access European user data. TikTok has since been banned on official devices across several US states, the UK, EU institutions, Canada, and New Zealand. In the US, lawmakers have taken a defensive stance against the Chinese app, with some members of the government calling for a nationwide ban against it.
Western governments have raised concerns about ByteDance’s potential transfers of sensitive user data from both sides of the Atlantic to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the country’s strict laws. Where TikTok has reiterated it takes data protection and privacy seriously, its reassurances have apparently failed to pacify apprehensive lawmakers.
