Many Facebookers in Vietnam on September 28, 2023 expressed anger when seeing the ad content of the fanpage ‘gaixxx’ which showed livestreamed video of two girls performing erotic movements. The video was shown for nearly an hour before it was pulled down.

VietNamNet reporters, following the ad’s track, discovered that this was the ad for a ‘call girl booking’ app and tricking people of paying for a ‘one-night stand’.

VietNamNet has published a series of articles warning of the ‘call girl booking’ ads, but ads of this kind continue to appear in users’ Messenger’s chat lists.

Dao Van Thai, 34, in Hanoi, said the ‘sensitive ads’ regularly appear on his Facebook page.

Previously, the ads about gambling mostly appeared on fanpages and were only found if users looked for them. But nowadays, the ads appear openly on Facebook.

The images of gambling games appear on users’ pages with attractive offers to ‘seduce’ people to play the games. 

The ads about the sale of fake and counterfeit goods, especially hi-tech products, have also appeared on Facebook. The ads are very ‘aggressive’ when impersonating the fanpages of well known brands, such as Marshall and JBL. 

They even have forged a news website for young people – kenh14, to attract more viewers. Ads about fake Samsung Buds 2 with discount rate of up to 70 percent have appeared recently.

The most dangerous thing is that numerous advertising of depraved cultural products can be found on the short video feature (Reels). The videos are sex scenes cut from blue movies, attached with widespread advertisements for aphrodisiacs.

An expert working in the Digital Marketing industry in HCM City said such videos are still shown on Reels because Facebook doesn’t take action to solve the problem. 

Analysts commented that the content on Reels is exactly the same which occurred on TikTok in the past.

According to Khoi Nguyen, who specializes in providing services on online platforms in HCM City, in the past it was very difficult to use an account to run ads on Facebook, but it is very easy. The accounts are not only created by advertisers, but also come from hacked accounts. These are real accounts and bought back by people who make money online (MMO) to run ads. 

Van Anh