Facebook Agreed To Censor Posts After Vietnam Slowed Traffic (reuters.com) 59
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Facebook's local servers in Vietnam were taken offline early this year, slowing local traffic to a crawl until it agreed to significantly increase the censorship of "anti-state" posts for local users, two sources at the company told Reuters on Tuesday. The restrictions, which the sources said were carried out by state-owned telecommunications companies, knocked the servers offline for around seven weeks, meaning the website became unusable at times.
"We believe the action was taken to place significant pressure on us to increase our compliance with legal takedown orders when it comes to content that our users in Vietnam see," the first of the two Facebook sources told Reuters. In an emailed statement, Facebook confirmed it had reluctantly complied with the government's request to "restrict access to content which it has deemed to be illegal." The report notes that Vietnam has become one of Facebook's biggest markets in Asia. "According to Ants, a Vietnam-based market researcher, digital advertising revenue in Vietnam amounted to around $550 million in 2018, 70% of which went to U.S. social media giants Facebook and Google," reports Reuters.
"We believe the action was taken to place significant pressure on us to increase our compliance with legal takedown orders when it comes to content that our users in Vietnam see," the first of the two Facebook sources told Reuters. In an emailed statement, Facebook confirmed it had reluctantly complied with the government's request to "restrict access to content which it has deemed to be illegal." The report notes that Vietnam has become one of Facebook's biggest markets in Asia. "According to Ants, a Vietnam-based market researcher, digital advertising revenue in Vietnam amounted to around $550 million in 2018, 70% of which went to U.S. social media giants Facebook and Google," reports Reuters.
How is this even news anymore? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's kind of like searching for anything that's been on the news on YouTube or Bing Video now. You can't get an analysis of something from a reputable journalist, and you can't get some random guy's clip that he ripped off C-SPAN and gave a good title to. All the video results are now 100% MSM. So you see CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CNN, VoA, CNN, ABC, NPR, and so on. Little two-minute soundbytes ad nauseam, the same results rehashed over and over and over and everything else that was there a few months ago completely buried. If this isn't censorship, I don't know what is.
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Seeing as how he had ABC and CNN twice each, I rather suspect he intended to include them, but didn't proofread....
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Re: How is this even news anymore? (Score:3)
Fox News, "Army to test prototype COVID-19 vaccine on humans in September, after mice trials"
Literally the first result. What are you looking for? What is a reputable journalist, in your own words?
Are you looking for some millennial to talk at you on YouTube with a picture of the NYT or Fox News on the screen, some liberties taken with the original headline and content, to tell you what it all really means like a YouTube version of a /. submission? This is entertainment bud, like Rush Limbaugh.
I'm sorry,
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He probably included the word "news" in the search term, which Fox certainly isn't.
USA and Australia have their own ABC (Score:2)
Seeing as how he had ABC and CNN twice each
ABC I can easily forgive: American Broadcasting Company (Disney's broadcast TV arm) vs. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (a BBC clone down under). CNN is a bit tougher since Chaser NoN-stop News Network [wikipedia.org] concluded in November 2003, though rectumsmasha may be right about it being two CNN articles in one page of search results.
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In a fight for legitimacy and accurate reporting between Fox and CNNN, I know who I'd be backing, and it wouldn't be the one these people [youtube.com] are getting their news from
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It's kind of like searching for anything that's been on the news on YouTube or Bing Video now.
That seems a really bizarre way to find out stuff.
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It's kind of like searching for anything that's been on the news on YouTube or Bing Video now.
That seems a really bizarre way to find out stuff.
Unless you are looking for some far-left or far-right conspiracy theorist to explain the "TRUTH" that "THEY" don't want you to know...
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What exactly were you hoping would come up in your search results?
Anyway if that's censorship then so is basically everything. TV channel didn't broadcast that tape you of your rant you sent to them? Censorship. Newspaper didn't publish your letter? Censorship. My email client classified your pen1s enlargement pill offer as spam? Censorship.
In reality YouTube continues to host your content for free and streams it in 4k. You want them to provide free promotion as well? Maybe pay you out of their own pocket w
Company forced to obey law shock (Score:2)
A non-story.
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They were not forced to obey the law. Vietnam is a small country. FB could have threatened to pull out and blackballed anyone else doing business there..
Instead FB caved, choosing money over ethics.
Re: Company forced to obey law shock (Score:1)
The purpose of a company is to always choose money over ethics. That is the point. If it is cheaper to posion your own employee drinking water than to properly dispose of said posion then that is exactly what a company will do.
The only way to add ethics to companies is by regulation and fines
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In every corporation, if a CEO chooses ethics over money, he gets fired by the shareholders and replaced by one that will choose money over ethics.
Corporations work this way, because we want them to work this way. By choosing to give our money to the lowest price business like WalMart or Amazon, we create this system.
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Thats a double standard you are proposing. You want that Facebook should honor every subpoena from notoriuously litigative US courts and take down content that is against US law but ignore content which is against Vietnamese law. That way lies anarchy. Either Facebook ignores all laws or it follows the law of the land. It cant just choose to only follow American law if it is doing business in multiple jurisdictions.
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Either Facebook ignores all laws or it follows the law of the land. It cant just choose to only follow American law if it is doing business in multiple jurisdictions.
Only because Facebook chose to become a multi-national corporation (by incorporating divisions in multiple countries to avoid US taxation). If they had chosen to stand as a US corporation, I would support their choosing to follow US law to the exclusion of other nations laws.
But they made their choice...
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You may support anything you want. However yur opinion does not count in countries you are not a citizen of.
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They were not forced to obey the law. Vietnam is a small country. FB could have threatened to pull out and blackballed anyone else doing business there..
Instead FB caved, choosing money over ethics.
Well, yes. I should have said "company run for profit chooses profit over not making a profit." It's still a non-story. FB isn't a charity or a humanitarian organisation and its run by psychopaths who care absolutely nothing about ethics. So this is "dog bites man", not "man bites dog".
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Last I heard, Nazis lost. Why would we want to hear from them? They're losers.
Also, last I heard, the same people who say blacks should respect authority so they don't get shot are the same people now saying they're not going to respect authority telling them not congregate in groups and just stay home for the time being.
These are also the same people who wanted laws passed so they could run over protestors who blocks streets or hospitals. I guess that doesn't apply here either.
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Funny how we always here about the BIG BAD NAZIS who were defeated in May, 1945 but never the Communists who are still in power. I wonder why that is......
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The communists haven't lost yet, but more importantly if you look at the lives of people in the remaining communist countries both before and after communism you uniformly find that their lives are better now than before. Is it the correct political/economic system for everyone everywhere? Of course not, but then neither is capitalism.
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I get your point, but it's worth pointing out that this doesn't work in Asian context. Vietnam is communist, but it doesn't really care about nazis. That's a primarily white western hang-up. Vietnamese historic enemy is Chinese, whatever their ideology happens to be on given day. Because their warfare isn't driven by ideology but geographic reality.
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Vietnam is communist
Very! [phibious.com]
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I guess you're going for a pepsi vs coke joke here, since pepsi was very popular in Soviet Union?
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No, I'm just pointing out how loosely people define communism
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Wait, you're going to pretend that Vietnam is not communist? And argue that this is about "definitions"?
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It's not even close. What makes you think they are? Because somebody said so?
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Because their current governing structure is a single party Marxist-Leninist state?
This is in no way controversial. Open wikipedia and follow up on the references, or just go to the site of Vietnam government and read on.
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It is single party, but hardly Marxist. It's just state run capitalism. They have to work their spreadsheets like everybody else.
just go to the site of Vietnam government and read on.
Yes, and North Korea calls itself a "democratic republic". Must be true then
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They need to figure out how to call all the political undesirables who don't toe the party line Nazis.
In Vietnam, they're more likely called Capitalists with a capital C.
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FB and hero in one sentence?
Only if Marvel has a new movie out.
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Sure, because everyone is gong to rise up in revolt if they don't get their daily dose of fake ED cures and can't find out what the Kardashinan sluts had for lunch.
Vietnam not free. No surprise. (Score:3, Insightful)
I am shocked....
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My takeaway is that Facebook is suppressing freedom for profits. It appears they didn't really fight it. Lets make sure they are not receiving any US based COVID stimulus money. Obviously not an American company.
So what? (Score:2)
Given that the US is desperately looking for an ally to fight against its major archrival China [nationalinterest.org] and that Vietnam is desperately looking to make money by exporting to the US [cnbc.com], Vietnam will just get a quibble on its censorship practice or what not, just like what other US allies Saudi Arabia and Thailand have got. Heck, back when the US was looking for ally to fight the Soviet Union, it even dumped its old ally Taiwan, ROC [wikipedia.org] and befriended with the People's Republic during Cultural Revolution the period with the
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The USA continues to make a deal with the devil, for the sake of ideological superiority. It didn't work in South Korea or Soviet Afghanistan and it really, really didn't work in Vietnam, many years ago. China wants Vietnam's offshore oilfields: It will be prudent to provide 'world police' services in return for a military base in the middle of Vietnam but the USA always demands the locals fight for American 'freedom'. The locals lose interest in dying for American ideology and realize that American fre
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There are plenty of people still alive who remember what happened the last time there were US military bases in the middle of Vietnam. If the younger people want a reminder they can go talk to the people of Okinawa about the drugs, rapes, assaults, pollution, etc. inherent in having thousands of US soldiers where the locals don't want them.
Who Cares? (Score:1, Troll)
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>Censor away! Muh Freezepeach. #punchanazi
This is depressing. Freedom is mocked. Censorship is celebrated. Violence is promoted.
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The mighty have fallen. (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember during Arab Spring and the protests that were organized on social media like Facebook and all those companies were so proud that they were bastions of free speech and government protests for human rights?
It didn't take them long to abandon any semblance of American exceptionalism and ideals of freedom. Seems they would rather be like Chinese censors and Social Credit auditors than any kind of platform for public speaking.
We are in very dangerous territory. More troubling is the apologists, even in this thread, happy to see censorship and authoritarian measures to shut down people speaking or hearing the wrong opinion.
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Goodwill for being a bastion of free speech on one side, profit on the other. Take a wild guess where a corporation will stand.
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Goodwill has it's own form of profit. I don't think any company gives a crap for any cause they promote. They want the goodwill.
Obviously, something changed. I don't think it's fair to lay the blame on only companies. It's the people too. More people today support censorship and authoritarian measures. Maybe it's also China's rise and money subverting those ideals.
I don't know. It's just disheartening.
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They only wanted the goodwill until they noticed that nobody gives half a shit about what they do. Facebook could literally televise slaughtering babies and cook them in freshly squeezed puppy juice and people would still use it.
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Goodwill? They were being paid by US-financed NGOs to carry their advertising.
Are you that Naive? (Score:2)
Do you really think the Social Media companies were not well compensated for fomenting the Arab Spring revolts?
Are you not aware of what troll farms are and how they work on Social media?
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You misunderstood their actions during the Arab Spring. They were in it for the money, always are.
Those governments were trying to completely block them anyway. There was no benefit to trying to censor themselves, the governments were having a crack-down and were not in interested in such subtleties.
Vietnam is willing to let them continue to make money there if they comply, so of course they comply. They would have in Arab countries if the option had been available.
Boohoo. Facebook is not above the law (Score:2)
These are legal takedown orders. Facebook needs to follow the law of the land if it wants to do business in the country.
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Vietnamese "Government Forces" have machine guns and shoot non-compliant Facebook management in the head -- congressional hearings not required.
That sort of thing tends to make the "I won't" boys bend over and grab their ankles. Not much affect on those of more solid character, but then those sorts refuse to work at Facebook anyway. Hence Facebook will do whatever is "requested" of them because they have not the spine to do otherwise.
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Who needs a machine gun when you have a subpoena. Get real. This is facebook. Noone needs to point any guns. Its a website for crying out loud. Unless Jason Bourne's been inserted into Vietnam posing as a facebook exec.....
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shoot non-compliant Facebook management in the head
[Citation Needed]