Vietnam has settled on an unusual way to police children online. Under a draft decree unveiled this week, users under 16 would keep their social media accounts but lose the right to post, comment, or react to anything on them.
It is a narrower move than Australia’s outright ban, and a stranger one, because it leaves children in the room while taking away their voice. The blunter bans have not gone smoothly, running aground on the basic problem of checking ages.
The proposal comes from the country’s culture ministry, which absorbed oversight of media and broadcasting in last year’s government reshuffle, and was outlined on Thursday by Deputy Minister Phan Tam.
The text has not been finalised and could be revised before adoption, according to the draft reported by Reuters. No implementation date has been set.
Platforms would have to verify users’ ages and register accounts for under-16s using a parent or guardian’s details, an approach that leans hard on the kind of age-verification machinery other governments have found difficult to make work.
