HCMC to build management system for 70 million Facebook, YouTube accounts

Nguyen Ngoc Hoi, vice director of the HCMC Department of Information and Communications, said at a press conference on Monday it had been requested to collect information of public interest and monitor toxic content.

A management system set to monitor information from not only the social media sites in questions, but around 150 digital newspapers, over 1,500 digital news websites, and 350 social media websites approved by the Ministry of Information and Communications, would also be within the system's reach. The exact time frame when the system would go online has yet to be announced.

The information department also said it is considering utilizing resources from celebrities and influencers on social media to conduct campaigns that raise awareness of scams on such platforms.

Hoi said the department is cooperating with authorities to create a set of criteria to recognize and evaluate content on accounts and channels, and from that propose to bring certain accounts and channels onto a blacklist for the People's Committee to consider.

In 2022 and the first six months of this year, the department collected a list of 108 foreign social media accounts with false or hostile content so they can be dealt with by the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information.

Authorities during that time have removed 330 Facebook posts, nearly 440 YouTube videos, over 570 TikTok videos, and hundreds of news websites with foreign domains that involve fabricated information.

Several account owners in HCMC have also been fined for different violations.

Since earlier this year, the information ministry has created a blacklist for brands to avoid placing their advertisements on toxic or violating content.