14ymedio, Hanoi, 27 December 2017 — The Government of Vietnam has created a special cyber unit of 10,000 “cyber soldiers” it has named Force 47, to combat the growing threat of “erroneous opinions” that proliferate on the Internet, according to local media, quoting Nguyen Trong Nghia, deputy director of the general policy department of the Vietnam People’s Army.
A piece of news that coincides in time with the requirement by Vietnam that YouTube and Facebook to remove content and accounts that may have damaged the reputations of the country’s leaders or promoted anti-party views.
In response, Facebook eliminated 159 accounts at the request of the Vietnamese Government, while YouTube withdrew 4,500 videos, or 90% of what the Government requested, according to news from VietnamNet that has been reported by Bloomberg.
Facebook, which has a process for governments to report illegal activities, removes content such as fake accounts and hate speech that violate their policies, Facebook said in a statement this fall.
Then CEO of Alphabet Inc., Eric Schmidt, pledged during a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Hanoi in May, to work with Vietnam against “bad” content on YouTube, according to a government website.
On the other hand, the National Assembly is debating a cybersecurity bill that would require technology companies to store certain data on the country’s servers.
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