On November 23, the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information (ABEI) under the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) held the program ‘Tinternet - raise public awareness of fighting fake news’. The program is part of the campaign named ‘Tin’ (which means both ‘news’ and ‘trust’ in Vietnamese) with the message ‘news online, how to trust’.

‘Tin’ is organized with an aim at providing information and basic skills to internet users, so that they can recognize, discover and prevent fake news and malicious information on the internet.

The program’s official website has attracted 50,000 views within one month. Anti-Fake News, a content creation contest, held within the framework of the campaign, attracted 50 entries with 130 million views after one month.

In addition to the videos sent from contestants, more than 100 videos have been produced to report about the program with nearly 280 million views.

The Anti-Fake News message has been used by content creators by placing hashtags on their posts. As of November 20, there were 1.5 million videos attached with the Anti-Fake News hashtag on TikTok with over 5 billion views.

ABEI director Le Quang Tu Do said he was impressed by the enthusiasm and response of the netizen community, Tiktokers, famous content producers and press agencies. This shows people’s commit to cooperate with state management agencies to fight against fake news. He hopes that young people and students will join forces with MIC in the fight against fake news, because they belong to the generation that uses the internet and builds internet culture.

Speaking at the event, Luong Thuy Linh, Miss World Vietnam 2019, the Ambassador of the program, said one of the worst things during the Covid-19 pandemic was the fake news boom.

The study conducted by a group of scholars from Oxford University in 2022 and made public by UNICEF found that 76 percent encounter fake news from online sources at least once a week. It increased by 50 percent compared with two years before.

Fake news is a burning issue not only in Vietnam. According to Baltimore University’s report 2019, fake news caused $78 billion losses to the US.

Linh cited the saying ‘A lie gets halfway around the world before truth puts on its boots’ as showing the rapid spreading of fake news. While 100,000 people can access fake news, only 1,000 people can access real news. 

Trong Dat