Authenticity of organizations on social media and dealing with false advertising

Delegate Vo Thi Minh Sinh (National Assembly Delegation of Nghe An Province) highly appreciated the efforts of the industry and agreed with Report No. 510 with many remarkable results. In particular, the delegate was pleased with the breakthrough results of the Ministry working with cross-border social networking platforms such as Facebook, Google, or Tiktok, to require them to comply with Vietnamese law or the Code of Conduct on social networks on the handbook for identifying and handling fake information for users.

However, currently, many organizations and agencies in the political system have fanpages on Facebook and have authentic identities, effective in propaganda work, interacting with people, but have not been granted official accounts. Therefore, delegate Vo Thi Minh Sinh requested the Ministry of Information and Communications to provide solutions to support the orientation and officialization of these pages, to ensure safety, avoid risks, loss of control and demonstrate the responsibility of these pages to society.

Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung said that currently, some social networking platforms have features to support this issue, such as Facebook with the “blue tick” feature, but not all social networks have this feature. Therefore, in recent times, the Ministry of Information and Communications has worked with social networks to develop this feature. Basically, by the end of the year, the Ministry will institutionalize regulations on the internet.

Delegate Tao Van Giot (National Assembly Delegation of Lai Chau Province) stated that in the past, in order to be able to use social networking sites such as Zalo, Facebook, Tiktok, Youtube, or websites with servers abroad for the purpose of advertising health protection foods that have not been assessed, the advertising content is not consistent with the confirmed content. Advertising food as medicine using the names of agencies such as health, cutting and pasting images of VTV, hospitals, the Ministry of Health; feedback from patients, celebrities, advertising food with disease treatment effects is still quite common and complicated, causing confusion and damage to consumers. Therefore, the delegate asked the Minister to inform about the solution to handle this problem fundamentally and long-term according to Resolution No. 75/2022 at the 4th Session, 15th National Assembly?

Minister Nguyen Manh Hung said that recently, Vietnam has had a mechanism to work with social platforms on removing bad and toxic information and false advertising; at the same time, institutionalizing regulations on the responsibilities of the parties. Currently, the rate of implementation of State management requirements on removing bad and toxic information and false information on social networks is strict, but the problem is that there must be detection and reporting. The problem is that ministries, branches and localities that manage information in the real world must move to cyberspace and carry out that management in cyberspace. If implementation is difficult, there will be support from the Ministry of Information and Communications and the Ministry of Public Security.

On the other hand, not many ministries and sectors have gone online and believe that this is the sole responsibility of the Ministry of Information and Communications. This is a concept that needs to be changed.