Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Facebook Accused Of Helping Vietnamese Government Silence Critics

Numerous journalists and human rights activists are accusing Facebook of cooperating with the Vietnamese government to silence critics of the regime, Buzzfeed reported.

In an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg published Monday, over three dozen Vietnamese are saying that Facebook shut down the profiles or removed the posts of noted government critics. The letter comes ahead of Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress Tuesday about Facebook’s mismanagement of user data.

“We’ve noticed a troubling increase in the number of activist Facebook pages taken down and content removed. We have evidence that government-sponsored trolls are behind the ‘abuse’ reports that led to the content takedown,” said Duy Hoang, an organizer. “Unfortunately, when activists contacted Facebook, they only received vague responses from the company.”

Facebook executives met with Vietnamese officials last April. The meeting came after the government had told local businesses to stop advertising on Facebook. After the meeting, Facebook said it was only held to discuss Facebook’s policies, but the government announced that it had set up a direct channel with the company for flagging “toxic” content.

Now, activists are saying that the government has used its purported relationship with Facebook to eliminate content that is critical of the government — with Facebook’s full cooperation.

“Yet when profiles of activists and citizen journalists are banned from posting or effectively suspended, we are given no explanation–other than the vague ‘violation of standards,’” the open letter reads. “We find this lack of transparency concerning and unhelpful.”

Facebook has also faced allegations that it is cooperating with the highly authoritarian government of Cambodia.

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.