Vietnam has been threatening to do this for weeks and I guess they finally got around to it because today when I was popping out a few messages to friends I noticed the little spinning wheel of "sending" was not going away to be replaced by a checkmark that indicates the message was sent. So for a lot of people, this means that Telegram is now unusable but of course there are ways around this block if you are slightly technology savvy and it isn't that difficult.
src
I really like Telegram and will continue to use it for things that I need to remain private and it is that level of privacy that is the reason why Vietnam has moved to block it in the first place.
Vietnamese authorities claim that nearly 70% of all group messages on Telegram is for illegal purposes such as drug trafficking, terrorism, and prostitution. I have no idea how they would come up with such a statistic and it sounds made up to me. I do know that when I go walking around there are advertisements of sorts for what is clearly a weed distribution ring that are spray painted on curbs and abandoned buildings.
To me this seems like it would be pretty easy to bust the people involved if you wanted to, just pose as a customer and then get the delivery driver when the arrive...
I never used Telegram for this sort of thing but I like that it can be used for that. Privacy is very important to me and if you are not, you should be. The government in almost all countries is probably spying on you and having the attitude of "I'm not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to worry about" is not a good one to have. One day the government might just decide that something that wasn't illegal now is and you might already be on a list somewhere. For me, I would rather them just not have that information about me to begin with and Telegram, at least from what I can tell, is pretty good about doing this. Telegram claims that even with a government order, they cannot give customer information about their users away.
Again, I have no idea if this is true but it is the basis for Vietnam blocking it in the country, probably hoping to move people towards more "compliant" messaging services like Whatsapp or the god-awful Zalo app that I've been told is run by the government.
You can still use Telegram with a VPN
This will never change unless the entire world decided to have a system similar to China where they have a single point of entry as far as their network is concerned and even then, all countries would need to be constantly updating the blocked addresses because VPN's are constantly changing and are very difficult to block. I am no expert on this but I know people that live in China and they are able to access a lot of things that the government blocks, it's just complicated and most of the population doesn't feel like dealing with the additional work and just complies.
So if you want to access Telegram in Vietnam you will have to do so with a VPN. Thus far I have used NordVPN on a free trial and also ProtonVPN, which I highly recommend because it is cheap and comes with a suite of other things that anyone who is privacy-oriented will also need and enjoy. I have been using the Proton Suite for many years but it was a lot cheaper before than it is now. You can have a look at it here if you want.
If this comes across as advertising spam please know that I am not that kind of person. I don't care if you use a VPN at all and I do not work for Proton, I am just a very satisfied customer, honestly :)
I would be willing to bet that this is going to be a difficult time for a lot of people that depend on Telegram for work, especially my Russian friends who seem to be almost 100% dependent on its functionality for not just their jobs, but also keeping in touch with friends and family.