Kind of surprising. I can somehow understand that FB bends under pressure from Chinese government - huge population of a "superpower" country. But Vietnam? It looks as if FB was forced to squeeze every cent of their revenue.
FB might have just opened Pandora's box with all kind of restriction requests coming from all over the World.
Facebook is truly huge. Several expats I know that had previously quit Facebook have had to unquit because it's so ingrained in society. Checking menus and hours (Facebook pages will be more up to date than google maps entries), messaging to order delivery, live streams for online shopping, finding an apartment, buying motorbikes...
Relating to your small businesses, a lot of them will have their own shippers to save on having to pay the cut from a food delivery app. When I needed a reusable mask after the ones I had were running out at the end of my quarantine, I just messaged a guy who had his online business and an hour later my shipment had arrived (he used an inter-city courier, but you get the point). Somehow being in a city of 8 million makes you feel in more of a community than being in a city of 150k.
I've had a bakery message me to ask if I was in the mood for ordering cupcakes when they still had extra at the end of the day (and I was). A few weeks after a new japanese ramen restaurant told me they only offered take out, they messaged me to tell me that they now offered delivery. It's an amazing channel for businesses to reach their customers.
It's also a really convenient place to get news, because since all news sources are government approved then there's no fake news to worry about. (and by fake news I mean sensationalist stuff, not anything serious relating to politics. I obviously understand the shortcomings with such a system when it relates to criticism of the government)
It's also really nice because you don't have pseudo-science crap on your feed (since sharing that stuff is a fineable offense). Although you still have to watch out for the moms in their Zalo groupchats.
I'm very skeptical of any state that outlaws what they label as pseudoscience or fake news. Odds are that means they're banning some of what I would consider pseudoscience and fake news but sometimes permitting or mandating what I would consider to be other kinds.
For example, imagine the US government as it exists today banning everything they call pseudoscience or fake news. Even if you say it's just "sensationalist stuff" and not political things, I wouldn't trust them to make either distinction.
Hopefully you see that "because since all news sources are government approved then there's no fake news to worry about" is essentially a verbatim line out of any dystopian novel. And with the added context of this article saying the state is refusing to allow Facebook to operate unless they censor posts that criticize the state, the allusion isn't even necessary, since the dystopian aspect is already so incredibly blatant.
> It's also a really convenient place to get news, because since all news sources are government approved then there's no fake news to worry about. (and by fake news I mean sensationalist stuff, not anything serious relating to politics. I obviously understand the shortcomings with such a system when it relates to criticism of the government)
It's also really nice because you don't have pseudo-science crap on your feed (since sharing that stuff is a fineable offense).
Every single word of that reads like exactly the reasons any media company that wants to maintain their own reputation should pull out of Vietnam and anywhere else that they have to compromise their content.
And post a list of countries that have made requests to remove any content specific to that country.
> It's also a really convenient place to get news, because since all news sources are government approved then there's no fake news to worry about.
Comments like this remind me that totalitarianism doesn't need to be forceful or hostile, implemented by a shadowy government from above. People themselves will often happily serve as salesmen for the regime - with a 0% commission, to boot.
> It's an amazing channel for businesses to reach their customers.
Do you have any insight on how consumers find this? I can imagine it's nice to hear (rarely) from a few places that you care about, but taken too far I think I'd find the mixing of messages from friends and companies pretty annoying.
If you look at the history of Facebook it becomes clear that they don't care about morals at all.
It's just about money, if upholding moralic aspects does profit then through a better image and more trust they will do so. If it doesn't cost them much they might still do so. But the moment it affects their profit they will not do so, through they might pretend they hadn't had a choice or similar.
yeah. they know shareholders will start punishing share price once they set precedent of not backing down under pressure of gov't in larger markets. They've rationalized it by thinking it's not their fight to fight, and that in longer term, freer speech will prevail.
Facebook obeys the law everywhere it is enforced. Some laws are better than than others.
Facebook makes essentially 0 profit in poor countries like
Vietnam. Their presence there is a more general wanting to be everywhereand have everyone on board to support their users and advertisers in wealthy nations.
The global digital advertising market is some 240BN and expected to grow to like 500BN by 2024, 550M is an incredibly tiny portion of their overall earnings from digital advertisements. Google's share of that 550M, for instance, would be less than 1% of its revenue from digital ads in 2019. That's not a lot of money for either of those companies.
200 million per year is a lot of money for anyone. Also if the global ad market doubles, wouldn't facebook capture a lot of that? Also how much more is vietnam growing than other countries?
There is no company in the world that will ignore a market offering $1 million daily revenue, more especially in advertising where cost to platform owners like Google and Fb is marginal.
Either reason is a poor excuse to continue to provide service in any country that uses political pressure to modify content.
FB and anyone else requested to remove politically motivated content should leave the country until that practice is stopped, and only resume service as long as no requests are made.
I know money and network effects will win out anyway but that's what I believe will pressure these governments to relent.
FB might have just opened Pandora's box with all kind of restriction requests coming from all over the World.