As Phụ Nữ reports, Vietnam recently announced Decree No. 342, which details a number of provisions to the national Advertising Law, due to take effect from February 15, 2026. The adjustments are expected to place stricter control on Vietnam’s online advertising activities to protect consumers and curb illegal ads.
Amongst the decree articles, some standout stipulations include a hard cap on the waiting time before viewers can skip video and animated ads to no more than 5 seconds. Static ads must be immediately cancellable.
If possible in Vietnam, then we can all have this wherever we are in the world. Europe set out USB-C compliance and everyone is compliant.
Theres a major difference though. It is much more costly and complicated to manufacture different hardware for different countries (especially with the eco system of peripherals behind it) than it is to change software for different countries.
Its easy for YouTube or Facebook to set all ads for Vietnam to skippable while maintaining unskippable ads for other countries to maximize profits.
I think you’ve just made my point. If they can all move to USB-C then a few switches at the back end would be far simpler. We just need the gumption to speak out and tell these so-called IT companies what is and isn’t acceptable.
I don’t think you understood what I was trying to say:
The difference is that companys wont do the skippable ads by themselves. Each country will have to do their own legislation to mandate this. Even if Europe would do similiar legislation to Vietnam, YouTube would still show full ads in other countries because they make them way more money.
Which is quite the difference to hardware mandates like USB-C, where a few countries can basically set it as mandatory and the manufacturers will roll it out for all countries because its easier and cheaper to manufacture one model than multiple different versions.
It makes no sense for Apple to produce one iPhone with USB-C and one with lightning financially. But it makes a lot of sense for YouTube to show unskippable ads in every country that allows it to make more money.
I think you’re misunderstanding. I think what the person above is saying is that if Youtube can go back to skippable ads and not pull out of Vietnam or go bankrupt (lol), then places like the EU or even individual EU countries have more than enough leverage to demand this.
Yes, thank you, this is my point.
VPN 🤔