As Phụ Nữ reports, Vietnam recently announced Decree No. 342, which details a number of provisions to the national Advertising Law, due to take effect from February 15, 2026. The adjustments are expected to place stricter control on Vietnam’s online advertising activities to protect consumers and curb illegal ads.
Amongst the decree articles, some standout stipulations include a hard cap on the waiting time before viewers can skip video and animated ads to no more than 5 seconds. Static ads must be immediately cancellable.
they will simply use this as justification to block YouTube from the country.
it’s an extremely popular site in Vietnam, but they’ve been trying to block it as well as Facebook for years. they’ve also blocked steam, the BBC, paste bin, medium… The Vietnamese government does not care about Internet technology I promise.
Social media is supposedly a threat to that government, but at the same time, however, they allow some fly-by-night outfits to run fake CSR operations covering up spam jobs and scams on social media.
The anti-government sentiment is very strong in the country right now because of all these new decrees that they’re making, some of which are batshit crazy, and the speech is happening largely on YouTube