The incident brought shame and trauma to the Vietnamese diaspora and placed it under media scrutiny, said New York-based Saoli Nguyen, executive director of Viet Fact Check, which combats mis- and disinformation in the Vietnamese American community.

Biases fomented by painful experience with communism have greatly influenced how Vietnamese living in the U.S. consume mis- and disinformation, Saoli and other Vietnamese media experts said. 

These biases are then seized upon by bad actors on social media for profit or political gain.

Trust is key

While elders rely heavily on Vietnamese-language YouTube channels, younger English-speaking Vietnamese Americans prefer to get news from just a handful of favorite accounts on social media, mostly Facebook, Saoli noted.

Vietnamese speakers’ trust in channels is primarily driven by anti-communist sentiment, Saoli said. “A lot of it comes down to trust,” she said. “The people who they find trustworthy are the ones who express their viewpoints, especially staunch anti-communism.”

For the first-generation Vietnamese Americans who had gone through traumas caused by communism in Vietnam, anti-communism is a deeply held identity, and any reference to communism can trigger intense backlash. 

Voices who don’t express anti-communism overtly are “automatically deemed untrustworthy,” Saoli said, including genuine journalists who present nuanced perspectives rather than offer up a specific viewpoint.

Saoli described the bias this way: “If they don’t believe what I believe, I cannot believe anything they tell me.” 

Dzung Do, editor-in-chief of Nguoi Viet Daily, the largest Vietnamese-language newspaper in the U.S., observed that YouTubers — which have dominated news consumption of Vietnamese Americans — often provide information that their audience wants to hear, regardless of whether that information is true.

“Those audiences cannot distinguish which news is real or fake,” he said, noting that if individuals constantly hear false narratives from their inner circles, “after some time those narratives will become their points of view.”

Underqualified YouTubers

“Anything can be blamed on China,” said Cookie Duong, co-founder of The Interpreter, a news aggregator that translates English-language articles into Vietnamese. As a result, misinformation that targets China easily feeds into anti-communism among Vietnamese communities.

One of the tactics she has seen is to “amplify the issue”: “It [an event] really happens, but doesn’t have the significance they are trying to convey.”

To gain trust with followers, YouTubers boast fake credentials like degrees from prestigious universities, Saoli said, and often translate English-language articles from both mainstream media and heavily biased sources like Breitbart or Epoch Times in real time. 

“More often than not, they filter it through their own personal bias, making the articles more outlandish than they actually are or more positive to one side,” Saoli said. “For someone who doesn’t know English, it is something that could be easily accepted.”

Mainstream media are at a disadvantage against YouTubers, who can bring news to their audience more quickly and are not often held accountable for errors, Dzung said. On the other hand, YouTubers often try to discredit mainstream media like his newspaper by pointing to corrections it has made, he said.

“As a news organization, we have to follow principles, ethics, and we have to go through processes while they have no responsibility,” he said. “When we make mistakes, we have to correct and apologize, but those people are not forced to do that.”

Saoli cited both economic and political opportunities as motivations behind the proliferation of often factually inaccurate YouTube news channels. Medical mis- and disinformation is also widespread among the Vietnamese diaspora, she said, where trusted messengers like celebrities are used to promote health or beauty products whose effects are not proven.

“There is a lucrative side to YouTube that allows people with hundreds of thousands of subscribers to make money,” she said. “Some creators seem to thrive off the fact they are prominent voices for Vietnamese Americans. They engage with their audience like a celebrity engages with their fans.”

Influencers are able to weaponize their platform to sway voters, she added. For example, “During election cycles, Democratic candidates are usually accused of being communists, even if they don’t exhibit any communist leanings,” she said.

Politically motivated

Myths that went viral among Vietnamese Americans online include misinformation that claimed Joe Biden as a senator had refused to accept Vietnamese refugees into the U.S. — which grew to the point where Biden was forced to refute the claim as part of an op-ed in a local Vietnamese-language newspaper.

Mis- and disinformation exploded in the Vietnamese diaspora following President Donald Trump’s entry into U.S. politics in 2016, and subsequent return in 2025, Dzung observed. Trump’s self-characterization as a strongman who “dares to speak, dares to act” and who talks tough against China has particularly appealed to Vietnamese Americans, he noted. 

Many Vietnamese Americans support Trump under the belief that he will help resist communism both in their homeland and in China. Ahead of the 2020 elections, the Vietnamese diaspora was the only ethnic Asian group with a net favorable view of Donald Trump, with 48% in support compared to 36% favoring Joe Biden.

Vietnamese Trump supporters are referred to as “cuồng Trump,” or Trump fanatics, and many actively seek information aligning with their conviction that Trump is a hero while his opponents are evil, Dzung said. Vietnamese Trump supporters are willing to accept Trump’s claims in part because respect for superiors or elders is deeply rooted in Vietnamese culture, he added.

Geopolitics also play a role. Vietnamese immigrants who resettled in the U.S. after experiencing hardship found comfort in U.S. supremacy, Duong said. This makes it easy to buy into rhetoric that U.S. supremacy is under attack by Muslims, China and undocumented immigrants, and for Vietnamese Americans to align with “making America great again” narratives, she said. 

Self-inflicted damage

Misinformation has had damaging effects on relations within the Vietnamese community. Duong experienced it herself after she realized how misinformation about Black Lives Matter drove a wedge between her and her father, which is the reason she went on to found The Interpreter.

“I’ve met people who don’t talk to or limit communications with their parents,” she said, explaining that young people found their parents’ political views fueled by mis- and disinformation unpalatable.

When mis- and disinformation vilifies immigrants in general, it feeds into anger by Vietnamese Americans toward other immigrants, she noted, as Vietnamese Americans can feel more privileged than more recent immigrants due to their long history of working to establish themselves in the U.S.

A particularly serious consequence of mis- and disinformation that targets immigrants is in the increased deportation of Vietnamese Americans under the Trump administration, despite a 2008 mutual agreement with Vietnam that prevents deportation of refugees arriving before 1995, Saoli noted.

“They voted for a policy that revoked that protection,” she said, citing stories of parents separated from their children and deported from a country that they have called home for decades. “People vote against their own best interest because they are misinformed about what a candidate actually stands for.”