Việt Kiểm Tin
This claim is TRUE!
Over the summer, Viet Fact Check received an email from a producer for “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” a news show on HBO with 4 million viewers per episode. They wanted to devote a whole show to misinformation in non-English communities. Would we tell them about what we have noticed about this trend in the Vietnamese community?
We told them what we knew.
Billions of people around the world use social media services like Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family. Yet on July 20, 2021, President Joe Biden blamed the hesitancy around the COVID-19 vaccine on Facebook, saying that Facebook was allowing misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine to spread on its platform.
Biden’s statements about Facebook becoming a hub of COVID-19 misinformation is TRUE. Facebook has even admitted that misinformation is common on its platform.
To advance our mission of empowering Vietnamese Americans to combat the onslaught of misinformation, Viet Fact Check would like to highlight and share the work of others in our community who care about the truth. Despite popular belief, there are many people in the Vietnamese American news industry who provide reliable news, fact-check misinformation,and do not promote conspiracy theories. VietFactCheck has identified a number of trustworthy Vietnamese-language new sources. Read more about our recommendations here.
What can you do to fight misinformation? You can flag content so that YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook know to remove them. These platforms have a team dedicated to identifying and taking down misinformation or incitement towards violence, but they can always use more eyes.
VietFactCheck started less than 6 months ago, with the idea that it would stop on Nov. 3. Now, the site is here to stay—at least as long as misinformation continues to plague our Vietnamese-American community. As we look back on a momentous year, the entire team behind VietFactCheck would like to thank our readers for helping us reach this critical point.
There are few things in life that are harder than having an argument about fundamental truth with somebody that you love. Here are some tips on how you can approach difficult topics of misinformation and fake news with your friends and family.