An internet law that gives the government power to regulate online content took effect in Vietnam last week. Decree 147, as the law is known, expands government control over access to information on the internet for reasons of ‘national security’ and ‘social order’.

The law expands radically on guidelines from 2021 that codify ethics for social media companies and the public, and rules, issued in a decree in August 2022, that require technology firms to store their users’ data locally and set up local offices.

It requires social media platforms providing services to users in Vietnam to store user data and provide it to the authorities on demand. Essentially this means social media giants like Facebook and TikTok must now verify user accounts using people’s phone numbers or personal identification numbers and, of course, store that data. 

The law also requires organisations to take down anything the authorities consider ‘illegal content’ within 24 hours.

Rights groups say the move is aimed at stifling dissent. The government issued the decree this November, though it appears it was actually effective from Christmas Day.

A large proportion of the Vietnamese population is on social media. Some sources estimate that there are about 65 million Facebook users, 60 million users on YouTube and 20 million users on TikTok, a significant proportion of a population estimated at close to 101 million.

The new laws also include curbs on gaming for under-18s, though these are supposedly designed to prevent addiction. Games publishers are expected to enforce a time limit of an hour a game session and not more than 180 minutes a day for all games. Just over half of Vietnam’s population – more than 50 million people – apparently regularly play games, so it’s not clear how these curbs can be enforced. 

Decree 147 also requires organisations to provide search and content-scanning tools to government authorities upon request. It limits certain functions, like live video streaming, to only verified accounts. As a number of news resources have pointed out, this not only an attacks freedom of expression; it also affects the large number of people earning a living through social media channels.

As a number of news outlets have noted, in October, independent Vietnamese blogger Duong Van Thai was sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of anti-state propaganda.

It’s not yet clear how Facebook’s parent company Meta, YouTube owner Google and TikTok will respond to the new laws.