Social media censorship escalates as Meta complies with government orders on a controversial development project.
The Latest: On Oct. 17 and 18, 2026, a growing number of Threads users reported that their posts opposing the Sun Group’s Ba Vì Safari Park project were restricted within Việt Nam.
- Users posted screenshots of notices from Meta stating that the content was blocked because “we [Meta] received a request from Việt Nam’s Ministry of Public Security.”
The Details: The restricted content primarily involves opposition to the Ba Vì Safari Park project.
On Oct. 18, the account vuph.uon*** posted: “The MPS’s cybersecurity unit has started sweeping and blocking posts about the Safari project [the Ba Vì Safari project]. Once again, they’re gagging us.”
- The post included an image of one of the account’s own posts that police had asked Threads to block in Việt Nam.
- The blocked post read:
“Ba Vì is a spiritual land for the Vietnamese people, and now Sun [Sun Group] plans to come in and build the Ba Vì safari project. Residents haven’t been told about the boundaries, compensation, or zoning. Only after people found out that the company had held a groundbreaking ceremony in the middle of the night, like thieves, and it spread on social media did they hold a meeting. They must have meant to present it as a done deal before telling anyone.”
Numerous other accounts experienced the same restrictions.
- Most of the blocked posts concerned Sun Group’s Ba Vì Safari Park project.
- Threads also blocked one post that compared the situation in Ba Vì to the Đồng Tâm incident of 2020.
- In response, many users have attempted to bypass the Threads’ keyword scanning by reversing the location’s name to “Vi Bà.”
Threads does not delete the posts entirely.
- The posts remain blocked from being viewed inside Việt Nam.
- They remain accessible abroad and to users on VPNs.
It remains unclear how many posts have been restricted.
- Only Meta and the agency that made the request have the exact number; neither has publicized this information.
- Documentation is limited solely to cases where users have uploaded screenshots of the restriction notices themselves.
- It is also unclear which specific legal provision the request cited and which violation the posts were accused of committing.
From the MPS: The MPS has maintained complete silence on the issue.
- As of Oct. 19, Luật Khoa had found no announcement, statement, or document from the MPS regarding the restriction requests.
- Luật Khoa also found no domestic news reports covering the blocks.
Under the Law: Vietnamese law provides social media platforms 24 hours to remove or block content upon request.
- Clause 5, Article 23 of Decree 147/2024 requires foreign organizations and companies to “promptly block and remove, within 24 hours at the latest,” content that violates national security when requested by the MPS or another competent authority under specialized law.
The Background: 2026 is the first year Meta has complied with content requests on Threads, according to the Department of Broadcasting, Television, and Electronic Information (under the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism).
- The agency reported that in the first six months of the year, Meta “blocked or removed 63 violating accounts, pages, and groups, along with 2,147 pieces of violating content” across its platforms, maintaining a compliance rate that “exceeded 94%.”
Thành Phương wrote this news article in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on October 20, 2026. The Vietnamese Magazine translated it into English.
