Vietnam has launched its own social networking site, after allegations that it restricted Facebook and hacked numerous Web sites with political content.
A pilot version of the go.vn site (www.goonline.vn) was launched on Wednesday and is the country’s biggest-ever IT project, a notice on the Web site said.
“Several people said I ordered the launching of the Vietnamese network to eliminate others like Google or Yahoo. It’s not true,” Vietnamese Minister of Information and Communication Le Doan Hop said in comments on the site.
“We are ready to have clean competition. People will come to places where there is culture, value and benefits,” he said.
The government says about 25 percent of Vietnamese use the Internet, and a top UN communications official said last year that the country’s development of information and communication technologies — including mobile and fixed-line telephones as well as Internet and broadband — was outpacing other Asian countries.
A variety of content from the political to the risque has flourished in Vietnamese cyberspace because traditional media are all linked to the state.
Western donors said in December that Vietnam’s restrictions on news media and Internet sites such as Facebook threatened the country’s rapid economic progress.
Vietnamese users of Facebook continue to say they must use alternate means to access it.
The government last month rejected accusations by Internet giant Google that Vietnamese computer users have been spied on and political blogs hacked into.
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