HÀ NỘI – The Ministry of Information and Communications is building a Code of Conduct on social media, Tuổi trẻ (Youth) newspaper reports.

The details were released at a conference on Tuesday in Hà Nội.

“The drawbacks of social networks cannot be eliminated, only limited by the behaviours of users and service providers,” said Deputy Minister Hoàng Vĩnh Bảo at the event.

Sharing Bảo’s opinion, deputy head of the National Institute of Information and Communications Strategy Đỗ Quý Vũ said behaviours on social networks needed to be managed like those in real life.

“Drawbacks to social networks have to be handled with mechanisms and standards,” he said.

The code of conduct was built to stimulate advantages and limit negative impacts as well as improve moral standards of social network users in Việt Nam, according to Vũ.

The code of conduct has four general standards: users must be respectful, responsible, healthy and safe. There are specific standards for service providers and users divided into levels of ‘should’, ‘should not’, ‘must’ and ‘must not.’

“The code of conduct does not go against Việt Nam’s commitments to protecting civil liberties and freedom to conduct a business according to international treaties,” Vũ said. “It also does not discriminate between domestic and foreign service providers and users.”

Moreover, information provided by Vietnamese organisations to service users including ID cards, passports and bank accounts is Việt Nam’s digital resources and is protected by the country’s regulations, the draft code of conduct says.

“State agencies can also have their own codes of conduct applied to their workers,” Vũ added.

On June 2, the National Assembly approved the Law on Cyber Security which will go into effect on January 1, 2019.

The law requires all internet-related service providers, regardless of whether they are foreign or domestic companies, to open a representative office and maintain a customer database on servers based in Việt Nam in exchange for authorisation to operate legally in the country.

Vietnamese people spend seven hours on the internet per day on average, with 2.5 hours spent on social networks.

MoIC has allowed 436 social networks to operate in the country. Facebook has the highest number of Vietnamese users with about 55 million accounts.

Việt Nam is ranked seventh worldwide in number of Facebook users. – VNS