Plurality in Vietnam

In Vietnam, no Vietnamese translation of the book *Plurality* has been found, and almost no articles discussing the book. Domestic newspapers introduce E. Glen Weyl as a scholar who came to AI gatherings, while Audrey Tang and Taiwan's practices have been reported mainly by Vietnamese-language media outside the country.

In 2025, people in Vietnam became able to send their views on a draft amendment to the constitution from a smartphone app. Gathering citizens' voices with digital tools seems to overlap with the world described in the book Plurality by Audrey Tang of Taiwan and E. Glen Weyl. How, then, has the book itself reached Vietnam?

In short

As of October 2026, no Vietnamese translation of Plurality has been found. Almost no articles discussing the book head-on were found either [1].

When Weyl appears in Vietnam's domestic newspapers, it is as a scholar who attended AI gatherings and similar events in 2025–26 in which the Boston Global Forum (BGF) was involved [2][3]. Tang (written Đường Phượng in the Vietnamese Wikipedia and Đường Phụng in Luật Khoa) and Taiwan's practices have been reported mainly by Vietnamese-language media that publish from outside the country [4][5][6].

This article introduces the media in two groups: domestic and outside the country. Each view belongs to the outlet concerned.

For example

A talk at a science and technology body (January 5, 2026). At the headquarters of the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA), a meeting was held at which Vietnamese and American experts exchanged views on the AI society. According to an article on VUSTA's site, Weyl was introduced as "nhà sáng lập Viện Plurality" (founder of the Plurality Institute) and spoke together with Alisha Caroline Holland of Harvard University. The meeting was co-chaired by Phạm Ngọc Linh, a vice president of VUSTA, and Nguyễn Anh Tuấn of BGF [2].

A conference on AI in health care (January 14, 2026, Ho Chi Minh City). According to the domestic news site VnExpress, Weyl proposed at this conference that AI systems be seen as part of "hạ tầng xã hội" (social infrastructure). He said that transparency, accountability and community participation are the keys to protecting human dignity [3].

In more detail

No translation of the book has been found

The book catalog site Open Library has no Vietnamese edition. There is no Vietnamese directory in the copies (forks) of the book's original repository (on GitHub), and Vietnamese is not in the language list of the official site plurality.net. Searching Vietnamese-language news for Weyl's earlier book Radical Markets gave 0 results (a provisional count by this site, October 2026). The catalog of the National Library of Vietnam could not be checked, because the search results could not be retrieved properly. In other words, a translation was not found; it has not been confirmed that none exists [1].

Weyl in the domestic media

In December 2025, the domestic news site VietNamNet introduced Weyl as a scholar taking part in "Diễn đàn AI Việt Nam 2026" (Vietnam AI Forum 2026). The article describes Plurality as "công nghệ cho hợp tác" (technology for collaboration). At the end of the article it says "Theo wired.com" (according to wired.com) [7].

Nguyễn Anh Tuấn, a co-founder of BGF, is a former editor-in-chief of VietNamNet. In November 2025, in an article introducing BGF's book Xã hội trí tuệ nhân tạo (AI society), VietNamNet named "cựu Bộ trưởng Số Đài Loan Audrey Tang" (Taiwan's former digital minister Audrey Tang) as one of the people who took part in building BGF's concept AIWS (AI World Society) [8].

Earlier, in 2018, CafeF quoted remarks by Weyl in an article on the monopolies of big tech companies such as Google and Facebook. The book's name, however, does not appear [9]. → E. Glen Weyl

Tang and Taiwan as reported by media outside the country

This article groups VOA Tiếng Việt (the Vietnamese service of VOA, the US government's international broadcaster), Luật Khoa and The Vietnamese Magazine together as Vietnamese-language media that publish from outside the country.

In August 2020, Luật Khoa described how Taiwan communicated information about COVID-19. The article cites Tang saying that many people were not satisfied with the government's response during SARS in 2003, and writes that from that experience the government learned to share information with citizens. It then introduced the public messaging of "humour over rumour" (in the article's Vietnamese, "khôi hài đánh bại độc hại"), answering rumors with laughter [4].

In April 2021, Luật Khoa also wrote about how Taiwan put on hold its plan for a new identity card with an IC chip. It reported that at the end of December 2020 the Minister of the Interior and Tang explained the plan in an online live stream, and at the start of the article compared this with Vietnam's chip-based identity card [10]. → Identity and Personhood

In November 2021, VOA Tiếng Việt reported that Taiwan was invited, and Vietnam was not, to the Summit for Democracy hosted by the United States. It also reported that Taiwan would be represented by Tang and others [5]. In August 2022, through a Reuters wire report, it conveyed Tang's statement that cyberattacks on government agencies had reached 23 times the previous single-day record [11].

Some domestic newspapers have also taken up Tang's ideas. In January 2025, Tuổi Trẻ introduced the "prosocial media" (social media for society) that Tang wrote about in Wired. According to the article, Tang explained it as media that does not just capture users' attention, but deepens mutual understanding, empowers every voice and fosters the capacity to listen across differences [12]. → Prosocial media

Citizens' views gathered by app

In May 2025, views on the draft amendment to the constitution were gathered through VNeID, an app run by the Ministry of Public Security. According to VnExpress, submissions were accepted until May 29, and by the evening of the first day a little over 230 views had arrived [13].

A document issued by the public security department of Tuyên Quang Province, according to a page that republished an article from baotuyenquang.com.vn, set the goal that more than 90% of the people submitting views on VNeID would agree with the draft ("trên 90% … đồng thuận") [14].

In September 2026, a draft amendment to the law on implementing democracy at the grassroots level (the law governing democracy in residents' immediate surroundings) included digital consultation and voting. According to the newspaper SGGP, the Chairman of the National Assembly welcomed this, while stressing that digital methods are a tool for widening rights, not a condition for exercising them. The chairman also called for making sure that older people and people in remote areas are not left behind [15].

Outside the country, in February 2026, The Vietnamese Magazine, published by the US nonprofit Legal Initiatives for Vietnam, ran an article asking whether a draft resolution to score citizens through VNeID might be unconstitutional. The body of the article is for members only, and only its title and summary could be checked [16].

None of the four articles listed here mentions Plurality [13][14][15][16].

web3 and Community Notes

An explainer by Coin98 on Gitcoin (a mechanism that distributes funds to projects that serve the public) translates quadratic funding (a mechanism that gives more funds to projects backed by more people) as "cơ chế tài trợ bậc hai", marked "tạm dịch" (provisional translation) [17]. Community Notes, with which users on X (formerly Twitter) add context to posts, has been introduced under the name "Ghi chú cộng đồng" [18]. → Quadratic Funding and Community Notes

What is debated

It cannot be said that Plurality has been taken up. The domestic newspapers' articles on Weyl do not discuss the content of the book. Weyl is introduced in the context of gatherings in which BGF and AIWS are involved [2][3].
Assessments of gathering views by app are divided. Side by side stand the provincial document that set a target share of agreement [14], the National Assembly chairman's reservation that digital means should not be a condition of rights [15], and constitutional questions raised by an outlet outside the country [16]. Each of these is the claim of the body or outlet concerned.
Reservations about Community Notes. The article introducing Community Notes mentioned above recommends that every social media platform should adopt Community Notes, but also points out that the system still has flaws and that the algorithm that selects notes is not fully transparent [18].
The sources are thin. News searches did not find articles by BBC Tiếng Việt or RFA about Tang or Weyl. Searches within those sites have not yet been tried.

Where it fits in Plurality

In the English edition of the book, Vietnam's name appears in only three places: two that touch on the Vietnam War (Chapters 2-1 and 3-3), and a footnote in Chapter 2-1 where it is named alongside Korea in the history of Taiwan's postwar status. What appears in Vietnamese sources is not the book's theory, but people (Weyl and Tang) and Taiwan's practices (Taiwan's digital democracy and prosocial media).

For example, the "humour over rumour" introduced by Luật Khoa also appears in Chapter 2-2 of the book, "The Life of a Digital Democracy". The book writes that government leaders' close cooperation with civic groups allowed them to model and thus encourage policies of "humor over rumor" [19].

Articles on other countries and regions: Plurality in Thailand, Plurality in Taiwan, Plurality in Indonesia and Plurality in the Chinese-speaking world beyond Taiwan

Sources

Check for Vietnamese translations of Plurality and Radical Markets (Open Library, GitHub, plurality.net, 2026-10-02) — https://openlibrary.org/search.json?title=radical+markets ［CC0］
VUSTA, "VUSTA trao đổi về trí tuệ nhân tạo trong kỷ nguyên số ở Việt Nam" (VUSTA discusses artificial intelligence in the digital era in Vietnam) (2026-01-06, in Vietnamese) — https://vusta.vn/vusta-tang-cuong-doi-thoai-quoc-te-ve-tri-tue-nhan-tao-trong-ky-nguyen-so-o-viet-nam-p94423.html
VnExpress, "Chuyên gia bàn về ứng dụng AI trong chăm sóc sức khỏe" (Experts discuss applications of AI in health care) (2026-01-15, in Vietnamese) — https://vnexpress.net/chuyen-gia-ban-ve-ung-dung-ai-trong-cham-soc-suc-khoe-5005872.html
Luật Khoa, "Đài Loan: Tuyên truyền chống COVID-19 bằng mông thủ tướng, chó của bộ trưởng, và thầy bói" (Taiwan: anti-COVID-19 propaganda with the premier's backside, a minister's dog, and fortune-tellers) (2020-08-05, in Vietnamese) — https://luatkhoa.news/2020/08/tuyen-giao-kieu-dai-loan-chong-covid-19-bang-mong-thu-tuong/
VOA Tiếng Việt, "Thượng đỉnh dân chủ: Mỹ mời Đài Loan, không mời Việt Nam; Trung Quốc tức tối" (Summit for Democracy: the US invites Taiwan, not Vietnam; China fumes) (2021-11-24, in Vietnamese) — https://www.voatiengviet.com/a/thuong-dinh-dan-chu-my-moi-dai-loan-khong-moi-viet-nam-trung-quoc-tuc-toi/6325982.html
Vietnamese Wikipedia, "Đường Phượng" (CC BY-SA 4.0) — https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90%C6%B0%E1%BB%9Dng_Ph%C6%B0%E1%BB%A3ng
VietNamNet, "Tầm nhìn xuyên ngành của Glen Weyl - nhà khoa học dự Diễn đàn AI Việt Nam 2026" (The cross-disciplinary vision of Glen Weyl, a scientist attending Vietnam AI Forum 2026) (2025-12-16, in Vietnamese) — https://vietnamnet.vn/tam-nhin-xuyen-nganh-cua-glen-weyl-nha-khoa-hoc-du-dien-dan-ai-viet-nam-2026-2472951.html
VietNamNet, "Sách 'Xã hội trí tuệ nhân tạo' - Đứa con chung của Việt Nam và Mỹ" (The book "AI society": a shared child of Vietnam and the US) (2025-11-13, in Vietnamese) — https://vietnamnet.vn/sach-xa-hoi-tri-tue-nhan-tao-dua-con-chung-cua-viet-nam-va-my-2462649.html
CafeF, "Google, Facebook, Amazon và thời đại độc quyền kiểu mới" (Google, Facebook, Amazon and a new kind of era of monopoly) (2018-06-08, in Vietnamese) — https://cafef.vn/google-facebook-amazon-va-thoi-dai-doc-quyen-kieu-moi-20180607223321395.chn
Luật Khoa, "Vì sao Đài Loan quyết định dừng dự án thẻ căn cước gắn chip" (Why Taiwan decided to halt its chip-based identity card project) (2021-04-16, in Vietnamese) — https://luatkhoa.news/2021/04/vi-sao-dai-loan-quyet-dinh-dung-du-an-the-can-cuoc-gan-chip/
VOA Tiếng Việt (Reuters), "Đài Loan dự báo ‘chiến tranh tâm lý’ sẽ gia tăng sau chuyến thăm của bà Pelosi" (Taiwan expects "psychological warfare" to increase after Pelosi's visit) (2022-08-03, in Vietnamese) — https://www.voatiengviet.com/a/6685510.html
Tuổi Trẻ, "Năm 2025: Mạng xã hội sẽ ‘vì xã hội’ hơn" (2025: social media will be more "for society") (2025-01-12, in Vietnamese) — https://tuoitre.vn/nam-2025-mang-xa-hoi-se-vi-xa-hoi-hon-20250109071124203.htm
VnExpress, "Lấy ý kiến nhân dân về sửa Hiến pháp trên VNeID đến hết 29/5" (Public views on amending the constitution gathered on VNeID until May 29) (2025-05-06, in Vietnamese) — https://vnexpress.net/lay-y-kien-nhan-dan-ve-sua-hien-phap-tren-vneid-den-het-29-5-4882482.html
"Tuyên Quang lấy ý kiến Nhân dân về sửa đổi Hiến pháp trên VNeID" (Tuyên Quang gathers public views on amending the constitution on VNeID) (2025-05-15, in Vietnamese) — https://tuyenquang.dcs.vn/tin/ubnd-tinh/tuyen-quang-lay-y-kien-nhan-dan-ve-sua-doi-hien-phap-tren-vneid
SGGP, "Đề xuất mở rộng thực hiện dân chủ trên môi trường số" (Proposal to expand the practice of democracy in the digital environment) (2026-09-24, in Vietnamese) — https://www.sggp.org.vn/de-xuat-mo-rong-thuc-hien-dan-chu-tren-moi-truong-so-post873154.html
The Vietnamese Magazine, "Scoring Citizens via VNeID: Is Việt Nam’s Draft Resolution Unconstitutional?" (2026-02-05, title and summary only) — https://thevietnamese.org/2026/02/scoring-citizens-via-vneid-is-viet-nams-draft-resolution-unconstitutional/
Coin98, "Phân Tích Mô Hình Hoạt Động Gitcoin (GTC)" (Analysis of Gitcoin's (GTC) operating model) (2022-07-30, in Vietnamese) — https://coin98.net/phan-tich-mo-hinh-gitcoin
QuanTriMang, "Tại sao tất cả các nền tảng mạng xã hội nên triển khai Ghi chú cộng đồng (Community Notes)?" (Why should every social media platform roll out Community Notes?) (2024-07-10, in Vietnamese) — https://quantrimang.com/tai-sao-mang-xa-hoi-nen-trien-khai-ghi-chu-cong-dong-203975
Plurality, 2-2 "The Life of a Digital Democracy" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］

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