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Vietnam ARTICLE 19 targeting Vietnamese activists on its platform. 153 One challenge is that individual users engaging in this behaviour do not always hide their identity, so they may not be obviously violating Facebook policy related to inauthentic accounts.154 Meanwhile, Vietnamese activists report difficulties in contacting Facebook about unfairly frozen accounts. A Vietnamese advocate who helps users dispute reported community standards violations arising from mass campaigns has said that appealing such decisions to Facebook is a ‘slow and difficult process’. He eventually connected with a Meta human rights manager in the United States who could intervene to restore individual posts but contends that Facebook has not acted to address the matter more systematically, stating: ‘We hope that someday we can discuss directly with the Facebook team’.155 Another activist who had been invited to meet with Facebook in 2018 says that she stayed in contact with Meta’s human rights team to alert them when accounts of activists were frozen but responses ‘slowed and then stopped entirely’, and she rarely tries any more.156 Case study: Data localisation in Vietnam The tech industry has actively lobbied against data localisation in Vietnam. In December 2018, just before the Cybersecurity Law came into effect, tech industry association the Asia Internet Coalition sent a letter to the Vietnamese Government criticising the data localisation requirement and its potential harm to economic growth.157 The letter followed an initial draft of an implementing decree which was ultimately withdrawn and instead became Decree 53/2022/ND-CP, described above.158 While this lobbying did not succeed in removing a data localisation requirement altogether, Decree 53 did soften the requirement compared with the earlier draft decree. For foreign companies, local data storage is required only on request and is subject to the condition that the company has refused to comply with other government requests. Since Decree 53 was enacted, the tech industry has continued to lobby against the requirement. The Asia Internet Coalition, along with the US Chamber of Commerce and the American Chamber of Commerce Vietnam, sent another letter to the government in September 2022, asking for clarification on several ambiguous provisions in the decree, including the process for triggering the data localisation requirement and greater precision ____________________________________________ Viet Tan, Open Letter Calling on Facebook to ‘Unfriend’ Harmful Social Networks in Vietnam, 1 February 2023. 154 Biddle, Facebook Lets Vietnam’s Cyberarmy Target Dissidents. 155 Keeton-Olsen, The Vietnamese Military Has a Troll Army. 156 Tan, Facebook Helped Bring Free Speech to Vietnam: Now it’s Helping Stifle It. 157 J. Reed, Google and Facebook Push Back on Vietnam’s Sweeping Cyber Law, Financial Times, 13 December 2018. 158 M. Nguyen, Exclusive: Vietnam Cyber Law Set for Tough Enforcement Despite Google, Facebook Pleas, Reuters, 10 October 2018. 153 38

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Engaging tech for internet freedom in authoritarian countries

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Information Operation
Internet Restrictions

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Article 19

Date Published: Oct 5, 2024

Abstract: In this report, ARTICLE 19 reviews the human rights context and responsibilities of tech companies operating in 3 authoritarian countries in Asia, namely China, Myanmar, and Vietnam. It focuses on the rights to freedom of expression and privacy, and the manner in which authoritarian states directly or indirectly expect companies to assist them in censoring content, promoting propaganda, accessing user data, and engaging in surveillance. While these are undoubtedly highly challenging contexts, companies have not sufficiently prioritised protecting human rights in their policies and actions. States are the primary duty bearers under international human rights law, but companies also have human rights responsibilities, as outlined in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). Even if domestic law or circumstances make it impossible for companies to fully meet their human rights responsibilities, they should take action so as to respect human rights standards to the greatest extent possible. Tech companies should not merely reference local law as an excuse for collaborating in rights violations. They should take steps such as those detailed in this report, like adopting appropriate policies, asking governments to justify content removal requests clearly and specifically, and reporting transparently on their compliance with government demands. For each country, we survey the country context and provide an overview of legal obligations which companies operate under that are problematic from the perspective of international human rights law and that may, as a result, put pressure on companies to become complicit in violations of the rights to freedom of expression and privacy. We then explore how Western tech companies operating in these countries, many of which have explicitly stated their commitment to respecting freedom of expression and privacy, have responded to these legal obligations and to other government expectations that they will cooperate in violations of these rights.

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Engaging tech for internet freedom in authoritarian countries

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