Vietnam’s battalions of ‘cyber-armies’ silencing online dissent from r/TechNewsToday

Vietnam‘s cyber-army, also known as Force 47, was deployed to counter the content on social media platforms deemed critical of the way the authorities handled the situation.

Vietnam’s Force 47 is run by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to hack anti-government websites and spread pro-government messages online, and is believed to be at least 10,000-strong.

Digital rights campaigners accuse Vietnam of attempting to replicate China’s “Great Firewall”  by regulating and censoring the internet  with the cybersecurity law.

Neither Google, which owns YouTube, nor Facebook has complied with the legislation, which requires the American tech giants to open local data storage facilities inside Vietnam by January 1.

Vietnam has a population of 96 million. With more than 60 million Facebook users, it is the platform’s one of the fastest-growing markets.