Vietnam Lawmakers Approve Cyber Law Clamping Down on Tech Firms, Dissent (reuters.com)
Vietnamese legislators approved a cybersecurity law on Tuesday that tightens control of the internet and global tech companies operating in the Communist-led country, raising fears of economic harm and a further crackdown on dissent. From a report: The cyber law, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2019, requires Facebook, Google and other global technology firms to store locally "important" personal data on users in Vietnam and open offices there. The vote in the National Assembly came a day after lawmakers delayed a decision on another controversial bill that had sparked violent protests in parts of the country on the weekend. Thousands of demonstrators in cities and provinces had denounced a plan to create new economic zones for foreign investment that has fueled anti-Chinese sentiment. Some protesters had also derided the cybersecurity bill, which experts and activists say could cause economic harm and stifle online dissent.
"Any expert here who actually did proper research and is aware of his own ideologies and social conditioning?"
If you cannot understand how intellectually bankrupt that question is then you probably cannot understand why people cannot fix things without applying their childish ideologies.
People are fearful creatures, they will never break away from it and sadly yes... they can be ruled quite easily through that fear. Nothing you listed is a fear based ideology. They are all just ideologies, the fear comes from the humans participating in them and there is not a single ideology in existence free of fear's influence. In fact the very formation of a group identity is a fear based survival mechanic that is as natural as loving your own mother. There are fearful, ambivalent, and fearless people in every ideology. Problems arise when there is no balance between these persons.
There's no such thing as "hate speech."
Though I don't fully agree with Humpty Dumpty's claim in Carroll's Through the Looking Glass that a word means whatever the speaker wants, it's possible to give a useful definition for phrases like "hate speech". I'd define "hate speech" as speech that encourages hate crime, and in turn "hate crime" or "bias-motivated crime" is crime that targets a particular protected class of people.
People should be free to express their opinions.
I agree, though people should also keep it civil. Though I am unfamiliar with speech regulation in Vietnam, U.S. courts have ruled that libel and encouragement of imminent violence are not protected free speech. I'd like to see someone back up allegedly hateful claims about protected classes with facts.
I was born and raised in Vietnam. I can assure you it's a communist country. And so for your information when you say there's no communist countries anymore that's very very wrong. The most power of them is China. Another is making lots of headline news last couple days is North Korea. The other 2 that I know of are Vietnam and Cuba. So let me sum this up for you: You don't know what you're talking about.
Facebook, Google et al. should say: "This is the product we make. Our product is designed to have certain privacy safeguards in place, and we won't abide by your laws because it violates our company policy.* If this means our product is illegal to use in your country, then we're sorry, I guess people won't be using it in your country."
The downside: they don't do business in Vietnam. How big a fucking deal is that? For companies of this size, not a very big deal, I'm guessing.
The upside: They look like the good guys, and they get a huge amount of good publicity, for once.
The other upside: Vietnam's government has just forbidden the entire population of Vietnam from using Google and Facebook-- popular products that they want to use, and that almost everyone else in the world gets to use. They're going to be pissed off. Royally. Maybe it becomes a lot harder for you to hold onto your political power.
(*) Yes, yes, I know. Facebook and Google are both shitty companies that violate their own privacy policy all the time, both in ways that we know about and in ways that we don't. I have no illusions about that. Nonetheless, the blatant authoritarianism represented by this Vietnamese law is *even worse* than what we have to deal with in the US (IMO), and these companies can take a meaningful stand against it if they choose to do so.
I spent a few weeks in Vietnam this Winter. Free enterprise was rampant. The economy seemed to be doing very well. On average, the people were happy. Probably happier than the average American. I didn't see the desperate poverty that is common in third-world countries. I didn't see beggars like you'd see in most third world countries and large American cities. However, they apparently still punish people for thought crimes (As they do in Thailand, for example, for saying bad things about the King, or in other countries for saying bad things about their invisible superbeing in the sky). So I probably won't be going back unless that changes.