The Vietnamese police and state news outlets have repeatedly warned people of possible crime, frauds and data breaches on Telegram channels and groups.
Telegram, which competes globally with other social media apps such as Facebook’s WhatsApp and WeChat, was still available in Vietnam on Friday (May 23).
Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party maintains tight media censorship and tolerates little dissent. The country has repeatedly asked companies like Facebook, Google’s YouTube and TikTok to coordinate with authorities to stamp out content deemed “toxic”, including offensive, false and anti-state content.
Telegram is accused of not applying laws that require social media to monitor, remove and block information that violate the law, according to the document.
Also, the document said that according to information from the police, “many groups with tens of thousands of participants were created by opposition and reactionary subjects spreading anti-government documents”.
The free-to-use platform with close to one billion users worldwide has been involved in controversies across the world on security and data breach concerns, including in France where its founder Pavel Durov was briefly detained last year.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron is set to visit Vietnam from Sunday.
