FINANCIAL TIMES
17-3-17

Vietnam targets multinationals in social media censorship drive

Hanoi presses companies to pull adverts from YouTube and Facebook over ‘toxic’ posts

by: Michael Peel in Bangkok

Vietnam is pressing high-profile multinationals to stop advertising on YouTube, Facebook and other sites in an aggressive effort to force digital media companies to censor political content.

Businesses including Ford, Unilever and Yamaha Motor have been caught up in the crackdown by Hanoi’s communist rulers on internet postings by foreign-based dissidents and other critics.

The official campaign is a test of how far autocratic governments can use the threat of lost revenues to push big media businesses to widen suppression of online dissent.

Pavida Pananond, associate professor at Bangkok’s Thammasat Business School, said the “fear-instilling tactic” was unlikely to work in the long run but might prompt companies to demand more control about where their adverts appeared. “This is a legitimate business demand that advertisers can expect to make of digital media giants,” she said.

Hanoi has raised the pressure by calling on all companies with business in the country to cease advertising on Google-owned YouTube, Facebook and other social media sites until they remove “toxic”, “hateful” and “harmful” material, including fake news, false allegations about personalities and insulting messages.

The Vietnam operations of Unilever, Ford and Yamaha Motor all agreed to the advertising boycott at a meeting on Thursday with several ministries, according to a Reuters report of the event. Samsung and Procter & Gamble have also been targeted by the government over online advertising.

Ford said: “We expect this to be shortlived, and will continue to evaluate the issue as Google actively discusses a workable resolution with the government.” Yamaha Motor said it had no choice but to comply with the official demand.

The other multinationals did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google and Facebook had “better take this matter very seriously”, Nguyen Thanh Lam, director-general of Vietnam’s Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information, told the Financial Times. He noted that the UK government had accused YouTube of placing adverts next to inappropriate content. “We’re not talking about one isolated incident, but something that could harm those two giants’ reputations,” he said.

YouTube said it had “clear policies” for governments to apply for censorship and would restrict content only if “thorough review” deemed it necessary. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hanoi says digital media company algorithms sometimes place advertising alongside material that breaches a widely drawn law prohibiting material deemed damaging to the government, security or national unity. Leading Vietnamese businesses including state-controlled Vinamilk and Vietnam Airlines have already suspended YouTube advertising.

Nguyen Khoa Hong Thanh, operations director for Isobar Vietnam, a digital advertising agency that is part of the Dentsu Aegis Network, said YouTube and Facebook accounted for about 70 per cent of digital advertising spending in the country. “Our clients will lose the ability to reach their target audience in an effective way,” he said.

Southeast Asia is likely to throw up more such clashes because of its combination of autocratic governments and fast-growing large consumer markets that multinationals want to tap. Vietnam has more than 90m people and gross domestic product growth that now tops 6 per cent annually, although some concerns remain about the economy’s underlying health.

Digital media companies typically say they put in place country-specific blocks on content that could breach the laws of the state concerned. Military-ruled Thailand has succeeded in barring material alleged to breach the country’s draconian lèse majesté laws.

Some media companies have made a virtue of refusing to bend to censorship orders in the region — albeit often in cases where the commercial damage is not great. Walt Disney said this week it had withdrawn the film Beauty and the Beast from Malaysia, rather than comply with the official film censor’s demand to cut a so-called “gay moment”.