Creating a favorable environment for fake news to spread

As of June 2021, TikTok's user base in Southeast Asia has surpassed 240 million, up 85% year-on-year. In addition, approximately 800 million videos were created by the Southeast Asian creative community, reaching over a trillion video views in June.

In many countries and regions, Tiktok has become the platform with the highest user usage time. Statistics show that Tiktok users in the US spend an average of 95 minutes on short videos per day.

Lots of information exposing and fighting on Tiktok. Source: Ministry of Information and Communications .

The consequences of Tiktok's rapid growth and the development of many short clips attracting users have created a favorable environment for fake news to spread, causing economic damage and social instability... Recently, information from Dak Lak Provincial Police said that, regarding the case of subjects using guns to attack the headquarters of the People's Committee of Ea Tieu and Ea Ktur communes (including the working area of ​​the Commune Police), Cu Kuin district, Dak Lak province, from June 12 to present, the unit has coordinated with the Police of districts, towns and cities to detect and handle more than 100 cases of posting bad and toxic information related to the incident.

The violations were mainly re-sharing information from Facebook, Tiktok pages... of individuals for the purpose of interacting on social networks. Therefore, after being explained, the cases realized their wrongdoings, removed the posts themselves and wrote a commitment not to repeat the offense.

Previously, on May 16, a clip was circulated on Facebook and Tiktok showing two people "skinny dipping" in Hoan Kiem Lake. As soon as the clip was shared, netizens expressed outrage, criticized this offensive behavior, and asked authorities to take appropriate action.

Or on February 18, a representative of the Highway Traffic Control Patrol Team No. 2 (Team 2), Traffic Police Department, said that the unit had issued a decision to fine a female driver who was driving a car while using her phone to record Tiktok. Accordingly, on February 10, social networks posted a clip recording the scene of a female Mercedes car driver driving while using her phone, endangering other road users. The Highway Traffic Control Patrol Team No. 2 conducted verification and invited the female driver named LHN (born in 1996, residing in Van Giang, Hung Yen) to work. At the police station, Ms. LHN admitted that she was the person appearing in the above clip.

“After the clip was posted, I received mixed opinions so I deleted it myself. Now, I have realized my mistake, which endangered other road users, so I would like to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them,” said Ms. LHN.

The Highway Traffic Control Patrol Team No. 2 has decided to fine driver LHN for the following violations: not wearing a seat belt while driving on the road, using a phone while driving on the road. For the above violations, driver N. was fined 3.4 million VND and had his driver's license revoked for 2 months...

Tiktok posts fake news, nonsense, and offensive content. Source: Ministry of Information and Communications.

Among hundreds, even tens of thousands of information on social networks, users can hardly recognize false information, fake information. Every day, every hour, this type of bad, toxic information still appears on social networks. It could be released by subjects to attract readers' attention, increase followers on social networking platforms, and facilitate online sales.

There are also many cases of posting and sharing false information that has not been verified due to lack of legal knowledge, inadequate awareness..., only when being summoned by the authorities to work do they realize their wrongdoings. There are also many cases where the subjects spread it with bad intentions to cause public confusion, sabotage the Party, the State... All of these wrongdoings have been and will be handled in accordance with the provisions of the law.

Comprehensive inspection of Tiktok Vietnam

At the regular press conference of the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC), Mr. Le Quang Tu Do, Director of the Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information (MIC) also pointed out a series of violations by Tiktok. In which, he emphasized that the rapid development of Tiktok does not go hand in hand with the responsibility of managing to keep the platform safe and healthy for users.

According to the Director of the Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information Le Quang Tu Do, in order to rectify the operations of this cross-border platform, the Ministry of Information and Communications is conducting a comprehensive inspection of Tiktok's operations in Vietnam.

Harmful and dangerous content for children. Source: Ministry of Information and Communications.

The Ministry of Information and Communications has announced a number of violations by TikTok in Vietnam, including that TikTok has not taken effective measures to control content that violates politics, opposes the Party and the State, fake news, nonsense, toxic content, and is dangerous to children. TikTok uses automatic distribution algorithms to create trends and spread content to "attract views" to attract content, regardless of its offensiveness, causing negative impacts on the community and young people.

“Currently, Tiktok has opened an e-commerce segment, leading to the third violation: the platform does not have effective measures to prevent commercial activities, business, trading, and advertising of counterfeit goods, fake goods, aphrodisiacs, and functional foods of unknown origin,” Le Quang Tu Do added.

According to the assessment of the Ministry of Information and Communications, Tiktok has not had effective management measures for content creators with great influence on social networks (so-called "idols"). At the same time, Tiktok allows copyright-infringing content to appear widely and is assessed to have no management measures, allowing users to arbitrarily use private and personal images to spread fake news, defame and insult others...

Mr. Le Quang Tu Do emphasized that Tiktok has created a favorable environment for fake news to spread, causing economic damage and social instability. In addition, this platform has encouraged young people to imitate and follow bad and offensive trends, distorting the perception and lifestyle of young people, and corrupting the cultural values ​​of the nation. These violations encourage and facilitate illegal business activities; at the same time, causing copyright infringement content to spread.

Source: Ministry of Information and Communications.

Recently, many celebrities and internet idols have appeared on Tiktok. This platform allows social media users to donate money to internet idols, but TikTok does not encourage good content. This leads to many people using toxic, nonsense, uncultured content, hitting the "animal" part of people to get more money from internet users.

Furthermore, Tiktok does not have effective measures to control copyrighted content, especially film copyright, along with information that arbitrarily uses images, violating users' privacy.

Mr. Le Quang Tu Do said that the Ministry of Information and Communications has developed tools and techniques to scan, detect and handle information violations. However, social networking platforms using algorithms such as Tiktok are "dodging" the toolkit so that it cannot automatically scan and detect violations, making it difficult to handle violations on Tiktok.

Faced with the above situation, the Ministry of Information and Communications requires cross-border service providers to be responsible for preventing and removing illegal content and information at the request of competent authorities. In case these organizations and individuals do not comply, competent authorities will deploy technical measures to block all illegal content, services and applications on the network.

At the regular June press conference of the Ministry of Information and Communications, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Thanh Lam informed that the findings of the inspection team have helped us confirm and initially assess that the violations of Vietnamese law by the Tiktok platform are well-founded. There are many violations. In parallel with the inspection to detect violations by Tiktok, the Ministry of Information and Communications has taken actions to exchange with communities of digital content creators - people who have great influence on social networking platforms, including Tiktok.

Source: Ministry of Information and Communications.

In addition to inspection activities, the Ministry of Information and Communications believes that it is also necessary to call for, provide information, and disseminate the law to those who are creating healthy content on social platforms at home and abroad. They have the right to know, grasp and understand the law to comply and do the right thing.

“Through content creation activities on social networks, influencers will make positive contributions, creating a healthy social network space that complies with the law, contributing to the fight against social networks, so that cross-border platforms can see that cleaning up and doing the right thing is the long-term trend, helping them survive and develop service provision in Vietnam, otherwise they will be punished,” said the Deputy Minister of Information and Communications.

However, many technology experts believe that the fact that cross-border social networking platforms like Tiktok do not have servers in Vietnam will be a barrier for Vietnamese authorities to thoroughly control these platforms. At the same time, to improve the operating environment of Tiktok in Vietnam, there needs to be strong enough legal regulations and state management to ensure the rights of consumers, and the interests of businesses and the country.

According to the Ministry of Information and Communications, in the first 6 months of 2023, Facebook blocked and removed more than 2,460 articles posting false information and propaganda against the Party and the State; removed 3 fake accounts of individuals and organizations; locked 8 accounts regularly posting fake news and distorted information, removed 54 advertising pages, and bought and sold invoices. Google removed 5,390 violating videos on YouTube and blocked two reactionary YouTube channels. Tiktok blocked and removed more than 400 violating links posting false information and negative content, including 145 accounts regularly posting content against the Party and the State.

In the Q4-2022 Community Standards Enforcement Report released by TikTok, the platform pledged to prioritize the fastest removal of highly serious content such as child sexual abuse and violent extremism. TikTok pledged to minimize the total number of views of content that violates community standards, while ensuring accuracy, consistency, and fairness for content creators.

In the coming time, the Ministry of Information and Communications will continue to work with Apple to remove violating games and applications in Vietnam. At the same time, work with Facebook on violations and cooperation, and implement training for Facebook in Vietnam to jointly come up with new solutions to manage content on the Facebook environment more effectively; continue to request Facebook to remove violating personal accounts and Fanpages.

The Ministry of Information and Communications will also work with Google on violating advertisements on YouTube and remove bad and toxic YouTube channels in Vietnam.  

STYLE - MINH ANH