I heard someone mention once that Richard Stallman’s extremism is valuable (in part) because, by setting one end of the spectrum so far out, he moves the middle in his direction.

By cowing to oppressive government demands, rather than support the side of the spectrum they were born on, Facebook and YouTube allow the middle to move towards oppression.

In the same way that you do not reward a child’s tantrum with their desired outcome, you do not demonstrate to the world that they can have both YouTube and oppressive governments; unless, of course, you’re more interested in brief-but-immediate comfort than extended-but-delayed happiness.

Stallman and Facebook/YouTube have very different goals. Stallman wants free software, Facebook and YouTube want to make money.

Facebook and YouTube are happy to push their political views, so long as the consequences don't interfere too much with cash flow. As a secondary effect, they're happy to let you believe they're nonprofit-minded with profitable products -- and that's also good for business, as demonstrated in the negative by late-90s era Microsoft.

... or you're more interested in organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful (information is more accessible if one works within a government's censorship framework and delivers what is allowed to be delivered than if one deprives an entire nation of access to basic information because a subset of information is controversial).

Yea, totally agree with you. I hope Facebook helps the Vietnamese agents track down these people and dispose of them. The law is the law, you know.

Dispose of them? Neither the article nor the report it's based on, say anything at all about arresting people, they are pretty much only shutting down YouTube and Facebook accounts.

The same has been happening in the US and plenty of other non-Communist countries, over here we just prefer calling it "War against terror" or "You broke the ToS!".

Of course, dispose is hyperbole. Still, comparing Vietnam to US or other western countries is utterly disingenuous.

Try to go there and live for a few months, see for yourself.

It seems pretty obvious that they could just back out of the country.