Report Reveals Facebook’s Role in Enabling State Censorship and Violating Digital Rights.
Taipei, May 31, 2025 — Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV) has published a report titled “Community-led Assessment of Rights in the Tech Industry: Facebook’s Operations in Vietnam”, a human rights impact assessment (HRIA) of Facebook’s activities in the country.
This report was developed with funding and technical support from ARTICLE 19, an organization dedicated to promoting freedom of expression and information worldwide. The assessment utilizes the CLARITI (Community-led Assessment of Rights Impacts in the Tech Industry) methodology, a collaborative framework developed by ARTICLE 19 and Ranking Digital Rights to empower civil society in evaluating tech companies’ human rights impacts.
Drawing on interviews with 27 Vietnamese rightsholders—journalists, activists, religious leaders, and civil society members—as well as extensive contextual analysis, the report evaluates Facebook’s operations across three key areas: government censorship, content moderation, and content promotion algorithms.
Key Findings:
- Facebook complies with government censorship requests that violate international human rights norms, contributing to a chilling effect on free speech.
- Content moderation practices are failing, leading to both the suppression of legitimate civic content and the unchecked spread of harmful material, including scam ads linked to human trafficking.
- Algorithmic promotion on Facebook favors government propaganda and clickbait, while de-ranking content from nonprofits and independent voices—affecting over 70% of the Vietnamese population.
“This report confirms what many Vietnamese experts, activists and civil society groups have long feared: By bending to authoritarian demands, Meta is complicit in restricting fundamental freedoms,” said Trịnh Hữu Long, Interim Executive Director of LIV.
Recommendations to Meta and Facebook include:
- Publicly disclose all government content takedown requests and ensure they meet international legal standards.
- Empower users to appeal takedown decisions and access unfiltered, chronological newsfeeds.
- Expand collaboration with independent Vietnamese civil society organizations and protect nonprofit content from visibility reduction.
LIV calls on Meta to engage meaningfully with Vietnamese civil society and reform its practices to uphold the rights of the country’s 73 million Facebook users.
Media Contact:
Trịnh Hữu Long
Interim Executive Director, LIV
info@liv.ngo