I don't have a Facebook account because I am not fond of them. But then, in Vietnam Facebook is big because it does two good things. First, it brings unofficial news to everyone -- you can follow political dissidents. In the past, people had to figure out to get over the firewalls to get to those sources of news. Second, it opens commercial niche retail channels for free to many people: You can find people selling really weird stuff online that you can't find anywhere. For now, it's still a net-positive for many people in the country and many political dissidents are happy to publish their voices on Facebook.
Now with that in mind, Facebook compiled to the Vietnamese government's requests to put their servers in Vietnam (alongside with Google) [1]. The problem is, while Google was never blocked, in the past in Vietnam, Facebook was blocked (more precisely, blocked intermittently). I don't imagine it was hard for the government to block it completely. Let's be honest, no one will join a social network if it requires you to have a VPN to access it. Why wasn't Facebook blocked anymore, all out of the sudden? The whole buddy buddy/kowtow gesture of Zuckerberg to Xi didn't help my confidence and trust either. It's very chilling to see a person with little ethical compass like him to have such an enormous amount of power.
I don't know what is more horrible, them turning in to the government the data of "dumb fucks" following dissidents' news and manipulating them, or people having to figure out how to access news via VPNs like it was in the past. At least, I know not every VPN providers give enough fucks about that country to comply with its government's request. Google was known to be kicked out of China for not complying. Can't say the same thing about Facebook.
But then, I can't do anything about any of that stuff, so I might be ok with it.
Now with that in mind, Facebook compiled to the Vietnamese government's requests to put their servers in Vietnam (alongside with Google) [1]. The problem is, while Google was never blocked, in the past in Vietnam, Facebook was blocked (more precisely, blocked intermittently). I don't imagine it was hard for the government to block it completely. Let's be honest, no one will join a social network if it requires you to have a VPN to access it. Why wasn't Facebook blocked anymore, all out of the sudden? The whole buddy buddy/kowtow gesture of Zuckerberg to Xi didn't help my confidence and trust either. It's very chilling to see a person with little ethical compass like him to have such an enormous amount of power.
I don't know what is more horrible, them turning in to the government the data of "dumb fucks" following dissidents' news and manipulating them, or people having to figure out how to access news via VPNs like it was in the past. At least, I know not every VPN providers give enough fucks about that country to comply with its government's request. Google was known to be kicked out of China for not complying. Can't say the same thing about Facebook.
But then, I can't do anything about any of that stuff, so I might be ok with it.
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