Unilever, Ford and Yamaha are amongst brands pulling their advertising from YouTube in Vietnam following calls from the government for all companies to stop advertising on social media.

The Vietnamese government began putting pressure on advertisers last month due to so-called anti-government information being disseminated on the sites by foreign-based dissidents. At which time, the state-owned Vinamilk and, flag carrier, Vietnam Airlines suspended advertising on the video sharing platform.

According to Reuters, the Information and Communication Minister Truong Minh Tuan said the response had not yet been good enough – with only 42 of 8,000 anti-government videos being removed from YouTube by Google.

Tuan said in a meeting with companies: “Today we call on all Vietnamese firms that are advertising not to abet them to take advertising money from firms to use against the Vietnamese government.

“We also call on all internet users to raise their voice to Google and Facebook to prevent toxic, fake content violating Vietnamese law in the online environment.”