The personal Facebook page with the status of former model Bui Thuy Hanh, musician Minh Khang's wife, had to lock comments because she was attacked by a series of accounts, even heavily insulted over the past few days.
When former model Thuy Hanh locked comments, many posts about Thuy Hanh appeared on social networking platforms, criticizing the career of the former supermodel and even using offensive words.
Social networks have been flooded with fierce arguments surrounding the incident between the technology driver and the musician. Accordingly, musician Minh Khang has been criticized, and also heavily insulted and offensive posts when the majority believe that the musician was drunk, had improper words to the driver, and "agreed" to cause the driver to lose his job.
Regarding this case, in an exchange with Lao Dong reporters, lawyer Hoang Ha - Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association - gave specific analyses, from the wrongdoing of the musician to the driver's self-posting of videos with customer personal data - which is also inappropriate behavior.
In particular, Lawyer Hoang Ha said that the fact that a large number of social media accounts attack the musician's wife and children is an act of "catching the fish and cutting the cutting board", this is a painful situation, showing a serious deviation in the culture of behavior in cyberspace.
Lawyer Hoang Ha said, "With the law, each individual is an independent subject. Musician Minh Khang's wife, children or family does not commit acts of insulting drivers, so they are not obliged to bear any judgment or punishment. Netizens flooding personal pages to curse, threaten, or publicize images of musician's wife and children constitutes independent violations.
That is, violating the 2018 Law on Network Security regarding the prohibition of using cyberspace to seriously insult the honor, prestige, and dignity of others.
Violating the 2025 Law on Personal Data Protection regarding arbitrarily collecting and using images of musician's wife and children to attack".
Currently, when the incident occurred, the online community massively attacked the families - relatives of those involved, which has been going on for a long time, and there are no signs of decline.
According to lawyer Hoang Ha's analysis, this matter continues to be increasingly painful, the core issue is not in the lack of laws or too light penalties, but in the implementation stage and crowd psychology.
Currently, according to Decree 15/2020/ND-CP, the act of insulting others online may be fined from 10 - 20 million VND; if serious, it may be imprisoned for the crime of Insulting others (Article 155 of the Penal Code). This penalty framework is sufficiently deterrent.
However, netizens often have the mentality of "law does not blame them" meaning too many cannot be punished and hide under the guise of anonymity to satisfy anger.
To reduce toxicity in cyberspace and protect innocent people, we need to synchronously implement more practical measures" - Lawyer Hoang Ha said.
Accordingly, Lawyer Hoang Ha stated his point of view, "it is necessary to handle points, create a deterrent precedent. Functional agencies cannot punish thousands of people, but it is necessary to selectively and criminally and administratively handle strictly some individuals who lead, incite, or have the worst insulting words. A few public sentences will immediately extinguish the delusion of the power of the crowd.
Furthermore, according to the lawyer - it is also necessary to blame social media platforms by tightening requirements for social media service providers. They must have an AI filter to identify inciting words and a mechanism to immediately freeze cyber violence campaigns when there are reports from victims, instead of letting victims swim in a sea of harmful comments.
Finally, there needs to be more proactiveness from the victim. The attacked person (like the musician's wife and children) should not just remain silent or lock their account. They need to use legal tools such as inviting the Bailiff to make a record of all insulting comments and posts, then file a denunciation with the Police agency and sue for civil compensation.
To make cyberspace less toxic, the online community needs to understand that any cursing comment written out in a moment of impulsiveness can become evidence in court.
