Science and expertise ministry accuses messaging app of not cooperating in combating alleged crimes dedicated by customers in Vietnam.
Vietnam has ordered the nation’s telecommunication service suppliers to dam the messaging app Telegram for not cooperating in combating alleged crimes dedicated by customers of the platform, in a transfer that Telegram stated was shocking.
A report on the federal government’s information portal on Friday stated Vietnam’s telecommunications division on the Ministry of Science and Know-how despatched letters to web service suppliers warning that there have been “indicators of regulation violation” on Telegram.
The ministry stated web service suppliers ought to “deploy options and measures to stop Telegram’s actions in Vietnam”.
The letter dated Could 21 ordered the suppliers to take measures in opposition to Telegram and report again to the ministry by June 2.
Nearly 70 % of 9,600 channels on Telegram in Vietnam include “toxic and unhealthy info”, the federal government stated in its report on the app, quoting police. Teams and associations on Telegram, involving tens of hundreds of individuals, had disseminated “antistate paperwork” and had been concerned in “reactionary actions”, the federal government added.
The federal government additionally claimed that some teams on Telegram additionally used the app to promote customers’ information, and had been concerned in drug trafficking or had “terrorist” hyperlinks.
Vietnam’s hardline administration typically strikes swiftly to stamp out dissent and arrest critics, particularly those that discover an viewers on social media.
New guidelines got here into power in Vietnam final 12 months that required platforms equivalent to Fb and TikTok to confirm consumer identities and hand over information to authorities, in what critics described because the health assault on freedom of expression within the communist-ruled nation.
In an announcement to the Reuters information company, a consultant of Telegram stated the corporate was “shocked” by the Vietnamese authorities’s transfer.
“We now have responded to authorized requests from Vietnam on time. The deadline for the response is Could 27, and we’re processing the request,” the Telegram consultant stated.
An official at Vietnam’s Science and Know-how Ministry informed the Reuters information company that the choice adopted Telegram’s failure to share consumer information with the federal government as a part of prison investigations.
Telegram was nonetheless accessible in Vietnam as of Friday.
In accordance with the Information Report web site, there have been 79.8 million people utilizing the web in Vietnam initially of 2025, and in accordance with the info extraction firm SOAX, there have been 11.8 million Telegram customers.
With shut to 1 billion customers worldwide, Telegram has been concerned in controversies internationally associated to safety and information breach considerations.
Telegram’s Russian-born founder and chief govt, Pavel Durov, was detained at a Paris airport and later charged with a number of counts of failing to curb extremist and “terrorist” content material on the app. He reportedly stays in France and is unable to go away with out authorisation from authorities.