TikTok Singapore’s operations in Vietnam violate local laws, say authorities
Jamille Tran
[HO CHI MINH CITY] Vietnam has completed a nearly five-month long investigation of TikTok’s operations in the country, with authorities finding the Chinese video-sharing app guilty of breaking laws on e-commerce, information security and the protection of children.
The inspection team involving representatives of six ministries said on Thursday (Oct 5) that TikTok has violated several provisions on content-sharing and e-commerce services in Vietnam.
“If cross-border platforms do not comply with local regulations, they are unwelcome in Vietnam,” said Le Quang Tu Do, director of the department of radio, television and electronic information, at a briefing by the Ministry of Information and Communication.
He noted that TikTok’s Singapore-based unit manages the company’s services in Vietnam instead of the legal entities in the country.
Vietnam’s latest draft decree, which regulates the management of Internet services and online information, states that foreign cross-border information providers have to install at least one server inside Vietnam to meet data storage and scrutiny requirements.
They must also temporarily lock content related to user-complaints within 48 hours; and block and remove infringing content and services within 24 hours of receiving legal requests.
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The ministry found that TikTok Singapore stored illegal information on local Vietnam servers such as fake news, incitement of violations, and harmful content towards children. Users’ copyrighted content and children’s privacy were also not properly protected.
In recent months, Vietnam’s government has been tightening its grip on cross-border service provisions by foreign social media platforms. The information ministry is accelerating the introduction of new rules regarding the management, provision and use of internet services, online information, and online video games.
The authorities deemed that TikTok’s measures to assess, detect and police infringing content and incorrect information of goods are “ineffective”, with the problem made worse by the ongoing circulation of such content thanks to the app’s built-in algorithms.
Do said that TikTok Singapore and its two offices in Vietnam are “committed” to addressing these violations within 30 days.
Foreign social media platforms are very popular in Vietnam, with the likes of Facebook and YouTube having roughly 60 millions users each, according to figures by DataReportal. TikTok, owned by China’s Bytedance, has been active in Vietnam for the last four years and has about 50 million users there.
In the second quarter of 2023, TikTok’s online shopping unit TikTok Shop surpassed Lazada to become the second-largest e-commerce platform in Vietnam. According to data compiled by Metric, TikTok Shop has a 20 per cent market share in terms of net e-commerce merchandise value, behind only Singapore’s Shopee.
Lang Minh, a lecturer in media and digital literacy and an educational consultant at MindX, said that jurisdictions around the world are becoming more wary of social media giants and their influences as a “countervailing power” to the state’s power.
According to a report by the information ministry, Vietnam has engaged the likes of Facebook, YouTube and TikTok since 2017 to ensure and improve their compliance with legal demands for content removal.
In the first eight months of 2023, the compliance rate was the highest at more than 90 per cent, the report noted. About 380 YouTube videos, 364 Facebook posts and 33 TikTok links were taken down or blocked between mid-August and mid-September.
“The Vietnamese government is handling the TikTok case gradually and properly with a clear roadmap,” said Minh.
“States and social media firms are cognisant that they need to cooperate with each other. But at the same time, they hold very different values. As a result, two sides are constantly cooperating and confronting each other within an extremely complicated relationship and without a way out, at least in the short term,” he added.
Despite planning to invest billions of dollars to boost e-commerce businesses in South-east Asia, TikTok has been facing heightened concerns from various local governments.
The platform was forced to halt transactions in Indonesia from Oct 4 following the country’s new ban on e-commerce trade on social media in an effort to protect offline merchants and marketplaces.
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