Vietnam Blocks Facebook

Authors

Caroline Finlay

Date of this Version

11-23-2009

Document Type

Article

Citation

November 23, 2009 in The China Beat http://www.thechinabeat.org/

Comments

Copyright November 23, 2009 Caroline Finlay. Used by permission.

Abstract

Writer Caroline Finlay has written for China Beat in the past about Southeast Asian news stories that have a China angle. Here, she draws parallels between Internet controls in Vietnam and those in China. She’s written about speech issues in Vietnam before, for instance see “Vietnam Youth Given Rare Chance to Protest–Against China” from May 2008.

Facebook users have begun having difficulty logging on to the social networking site, the Associated Press and the Inter Press Service reported on November 17th.

News agencies are citing an unverified document that says it’s from Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security and states, “For security reasons and to fight against propagative activities that oppose the Party and the government, Department of Professional Technology – Office of Security Administration – Ministry of Public Security suggests that the addressed companies to apply technical methods to block thoroughly these following websites:” followed by a list of eight websites including two Facebook addresses.

Of the web sites listed, Facebook has gotten the most attention from the press and from Vietnam’s blogging community, many of whom had set up shop there after social networking site Yahoo! 360 was shut down this August. Almost five years of content was removed and many users lost friend lists and comments. Yahoo offered replacement services Yahoo! 360Plus and Yahoo! Profile, which have less functionality.