Positive impact of social media

The Hanoitimes – Vietnam has long requested foreign social media platforms to restrict content that it considers potentially toxic and harmful to its interests.

Vietnam has advanced the fight against toxic content on the cyber space, with the quantity of violating content removed from Facebook and Google so far this year hitting a record high.

Facebook users in Vietnam in January 2020. Source: NapoleonCat

As of October 2020, Facebook removed 2,036 articles, up 500% from that in 2019, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) said in a recent report sent to the National Assembly.

Facebook has removed 286 accounts that falsify profiles of the country’s leaders and disseminate fake news that incites subversion of state power, causes hostile, and defames the leaders, according to the report.

To give a hand to the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, Facebook has removed 100% of fake news related to the global health crisis, including 11 accounts forging the Ministry of Health and 141 entries distorting the situation in Vietnam.

The rate by Google has reached 90% so far this year. In the first three quarter of 2020, Google’s YouTube has blocked and removed 10,877 videos out of 24,617 violating items from 2017 to September 2020.

In another move, between July 2017 and September 2020, Google has blocked access to 24 out of 62 YouTube channels that contain 11,212 defiant videos.

Apple Inc., meanwhile, has required app distributors on digital distribution platform App Store to get license by Vietnam’s authorities for their products. As a result, as many as 28 unlicensed and violating games have been removed at the MIC’s request.

The ministry attributed the results to its requesting Facebook and Google to follow Vietnam’s law in monitoring, minimizing, blocking and removing fake, harmful, defamatory, offensive or objectionable information.

In addition, disseminators of fake news in Vietnam have been strictly punished by the Vietnamese authorities.

Most-used social media platforms in Vietnam. Source: We Are Social and Hootsuite

Long-lasting request

Vietnam has for long requested Facebook and Google monitor and remove content that the country’s authorities reckon “inappropriate,” “distorting” and “slanderous”.

Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung, who ran military-run Viettel Group, a giant Vietnamese multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Hanoi, has vowed to make foreign social networks abide by Vietnamese law while facilitating their operations in the country.

Mr. Hung said in an interpellation at a session of the National Assembly in November 2019 that Vietnam welcomed foreign social network developers as long as they conform with Vietnam’s law.

Meanwhile, the minister has made efforts to promote locally-developed social networks that can compete with foreign peers.

Social Media Stats Vietnam September 2019-September 2020. Source: Statcounter

In Vietnam, entries on social network or pieces of news that are believed to be fake, harmful, defamatory, offensive or objectionable are subject to restrictions.

Early last year, Vietnam accused Facebook of violating a new cybersecurity law by allowing users to post anti-government comments on the platform.

The cybersecurity law that came into force early 2019 requires foreign companies such as Facebook and Google to set up representative offices and store data in Vietnam.

In the country of 97 million people, over 60 million use Facebook as the main platform for both e-commerce and expressions of their own views.

The number of users makes Facebook the unchallenged leader in Vietnam’s social media.

Unlike in Western countries, where Facebook’s popularity is decreasing among youth, Vietnamese teens remain loyal to the network.

More than 90% of Vietnamese social media users connect at least once a day to Facebook.

The Hanoitimes – Vietnam should follow the EU’s steps in applying law to better revenue sharing between social media platforms and all content creators including newspapers and magazines.

Total digital advertising turnover in Vietnam would rise to US$630 million by the end of this year, and that of Facebook and Google would go up parallel, reaching a combined US$450 million, according to estimates by ANTS, an integrated programmatic advertising platform, and other sources.

The two tech giants have increasingly gained revenue in Vietnam, sending the local press industry struggling. To make the picture clearer, the online advertising revenue in 2010 in Vietnam was only around US$10 million, of which Google’s and Facebook’s just made up a small amount.
Now the combined revenue of those two largest cross-border platforms in 2018 astonishingly surged to US$387 million, swallowing the biggest portion of online advertising of US$550 million.
In the meantime, the rate of press agencies earning revenue from online advertising plummeted to 31% in 2018 and will continue to fall to 29% in 2019 compared to 81% in 2010.
Also according to a 2018 report of the Central Commission for Communication and Education of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the revenue from online and printed press in Vietnam was VND4.9 trillion (US$210 million) in 2018 and that of television was VND10 trillion (US$429 million).
The figures pose the question about ads business of Facebook and Google as those platforms earned millions of dollars by sharing and citing contents, news articles of local content creators and press agencies but aversely shared the revenue with them, who eventually are accountable to the contents, VietNamNet reported.
Unfortunately, the Vietnamese government is still struggling to tax those revenues of Facebook and Google.
At the beginning of this year, policy expert Nguyen Quang Dong from the Institute for Policy Studies and Communication Development IPS raised his view that Vietnam should follow the EU’s steps in applying law to better revenue sharing between social media platforms and all content creators including newspapers and magazines.
The law is considered a move to guarantee the rights of press agencies which play significant role in providing contents for the social media platforms.
The dominace of social media platforms
The US-based Pew Research Institute’s reports showed that 80% of Vietnamese considered social media positive while just a mere 6% thought it is negative. As a result, despite some undeniable negative social consequences it has caused, social media is still regarded as an essential source of information.
Under the Facebook’s algorithm, users mostly see in their news feed stories which are relevant to them as it ranks the contents based on users’ reactions on previous posts. This could lead to the display of a part of the truth, not the whole of it, which negatively affect people and businesses. However, media experts said, this algorithm may become strength of mainstream press.
These press agencies are unable to compete with the social platforms in terms of speed but it is the accuracy and the honesty of the delivered information that guarantee its value and existence, according to Chairman and CEO of Le Group of Companies Le Quoc Vinh.
By 2021, it is forecast that over 3 billion people in the world would be subscribers of social media platforms while Vietnam would see 57.43% of its population using Facebook, 12.81% watching YouTube and the numbers continue to rise.

The Hanoitimes – Posting others’ personal photos on Facebook without consent is now considered an infringement of privacy in Vietnam.

Facebook users in Vietnam will face a fine of between VND10 million and VND20 million (US$426-851) for posting others’ personal photos without their permission, ZingNew reported, citing the Vietnamese government’s new decree which came into effect from April 15.

Nguyen Ngoc Viet, a lawyer from the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association, told Zing that in accordance with Article 32 of the Civil Code, individuals have the right to their photos and the use of their photos must be agreed by owners. Therefore, posting others’ photos on Facebook without consent is considered an infringement of privacy.

Illustrative photo. Source: Reuters

Viet added that a fine of US$426-851 is also applied for a number of other similar acts such as unauthorized access, use and destruction of information or system of information; provision, storing or use of digital information to threaten, harass, misrepresent, slander or defame individuals or organizations.

Those who disclose personal privacy or State organization’s classified information on social media without the party’s consent, which are not serious enough for penal liability, will be fined VND20-30 million (US$851-1,277).

The new decree provides penalties of between US$426 and US$851 for people who share false or libelous information that defames individuals or organizations.

The same penalty also applies to detailed descriptions of horrific acts or accidents, sharing gambling information or images of Vietnam maps infringing national sovereignty

Besides, Facebook users will face penalties of between VND30 million and VN50 million (US$1,277-2,200) for taking advantage of online communication on the Internet and telecommunication networks to misappropriate up to VND2 million (US$85.13).

The decree also suggests punishment of between VND70 million and VND100 million (US$2,980-4,257) for people who create fake Facebook pages or hack into the accounts of organizations or individuals to misappropriate up to US$85.13.

Vietnam has more than half of population having internet access and owning social media accounts. Facebook is the most popular social network in the country.

A study by the Vietnam Program for Internet and Society at the Vietnam National University in Hanoi showed that nearly 80% of the 1,000 internet users surveyed said they were either victims or had witnessed public slandering on Facebook or other social media platforms.

The Vietnamese government has taken various steps to crack down on crimes on social media and worked with global social media platforms to enhance internet management.

The Hanoitimes – Vietnam posted net spending on offshore crude oil of nearly US$1.8 billion in 2019.

Vietnam’s external balance is set to improve by over US$1.5 billion in 2020 as a result of a sharp decline in global oil prices, according to Viet Dragon Securities Company (VDSC).

Crude oil price (USD per barrel).

Crude oil prices crashed by over 30% last Friday because of disagreements between the OPEC and Russia on cuts in production. Meanwhile, Vietnam is a net crude imporer and its net spending on offshore crude oil in 2019 reached nearly US$1.8 billion.

Regarding fiscal policy, VDSC expected no unanticipated changes caused by strained public finances in 2020 because of the weakening of oil revenues and taxes from export/import goods, said the VDSC in its latest report.

In the context of the oil crash accompanied by a global economic slowdown, it is predicted real income gains for consumers will be limited in Vietnam, due to the people’s current preference for saving rather than spending. The clearest impact is the pass-through into slowing inflation which may ease pressure on the State Bank of Vietnam, the country’s central bank, and present a window of opportunity to implement policy accommodation.

As a result, the circumstance may lead to the SBV’s decision to lower interest rates in the second half of the second quarter.

In the past, the plunge in crude oil prices has led to significant real income shifts from exporting to importing countries. Although that is a zero-sum game between oil exporting and importing countries, the economic models of the World Bank showed that declines in crude oil prices likely result in a net positive effect for global activity over the medium term.

The losses of oil-exporting countries are entirely offset by stronger growth in oil-importing ones via rising consumption, lower inflation and widening policy room that would lower macroeconomic vulnerabilities.

However, in reality, the impact varies among oil-importing countries in different periods and the economic effects are dependent on at least three critical aspects of the oil price decline, including 1) Underlying drivers of the oil price decline, 2) Persistence of the oil price decline and 3) The extent of price pass-through.

The explanation for the present plunge in crude oil prices hints that both supply- and demand-side effects are dominant.

Energy prices dropped by 10% since the beginning of the year as the Covid-19 outbreak has darkened the outlook of global demand. Besides Italy, France and Japan, more and more countries are expected to suffer technical recessions in the first half of 2020. Crude oil producers are hurt further due to a significant shift of OPEC policies that have been unable to curb supply.

The last three plunges in crude oil prices were due to the unwinding of geopolitical risks in Middle East in 1980s, global finance collapse in 2008 and technology-driven surprises in the production of unconventional oil in 2014. The current drop in crude oil prices is highly sensitive to the effort of containing the epidemic and the deals of big oil exporters. Whether the drop is temporary or not is important to assess its impact on saving real income gains or translating into higher spending to lift economic activity.

The third factor is related to the price pass-through that determines how much of the decline in oil prices translates into a drop in gasoline and petroleum prices at the retail level. The benefits depend on the specifics of the subsidy and pricing regimes.

In Vietnam, there are administrative controls on energy prices in which taxes and fees account for nearly half of retail prices. This somehow limits the positive impacts from lower energy prices on customers’ income and consumption. In 2014-2016, for example, gasoline prices in Vietnam decreased by approximately 40% while global crude oil prices declined by 70%.

On January 27, the first community COVID-19 case in Hai Duong province’s Chi Linh City was detected – Patient 1,552 – a worker in close contact with a woman who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 after arriving in Japan.

According to the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control, Chi Linh city was the largest outbreak in the country since the pandemic began early last year with 383 confirmed cases out of 684 cases reported in Hai Duong province.

The outbreak started at a company with more than 2,300 workers and then spread to the community, which caused difficulties in controlling the infections.

As the outbreak was gradually controlled, Hai Duong province’s authorities decided to end the lockdowns and province-wide social distancing, entering a “new normal” phase with twin tasks of drastically fighting the coronavirus and taking action for socio-economic development.

Secretary of the Hai Duong Provincial Party Committee Pham Xuan Thang applauded efforts made by authorities, health experts and people in fighting the pandemic, particularly contributions of people on the front lines.

Besides lifting the lockdown in Chi Linh city and Cam Giang district and the end of province-wide social distancing, the Hai Duong Province People’s Committee on March 2 decided to divide the localities in the province into two groups under different restrictions depending on the COVID-19 risks.

Until March 17, four high-risk localities, including Hai Duong city, Kinh Mon township, Cam Giang district and Kim Thanh, will be placed under the Government’s Directive 15, the highest level of social distancing first introduced in March last year when the country entered nationwide lockdown. The directive prescribes limiting large gatherings, meetings with over 20 people in-doors or 10 people outdoors, maintaining two meters distance between individuals in public places, non-essential services are shut down, public passenger transport is halted, and travel is heavily restricted.

The remaining eight localities in the province will follow the less restrictive Government’s Directive 19 on social distancing norms.

Hai Duong will continue to halt festivals, religious rituals, sporting events and other unimportant events that require large gatherings in public.

Hai Duong now has about 11,000 such teams with the participation of about 25,000 members.

Then, authorities need to assess the connection between the other areas and the areas where outbreaks happened.

Each locality in the province should also review their preventive measures and strictly follow the Health Ministry’s ‘5K’ message as the pandemic was still developing worldwide. Provinces with industrial zones like Hai Duong were always more vulnerable to disease risks.

Source: VNA