Portal's 'Clean Declaration'... Have Malicious Commenters Really Disappeared?

Nate Ends Celebrity News Comments Following Naver and Kakao
Hate Comments Decrease on Portals, but Trolls Move in Large Numbers to Instagram and Others

[Asia Economy Reporter Jin-gyu Lee] Following Naver and Kakao, Nate has also decided to discontinue the comment service on entertainment news. As portals continue their battles against malicious comments (malpl), the use of abusive and hateful expressions in comments is decreasing. However, as domestic portals significantly improve their comment services, 'malplers' seem to be moving to global social networking services (SNS) such as Instagram and YouTube.

According to the IT industry on the 4th, Nate will end the comment service on entertainment news starting from the 7th. Nate stated, "We reflected user opinions expressing concerns about the dysfunctions of entertainment news comments beyond their positive role in supporting broadcast programs or entertainers."

Nate will continue to provide comment services in other news categories but will make all users' comment histories public. The 'MY Comments' feature, which shows a user's comment history, will be unconditionally visible to other users. Until now, Nate allowed users to choose whether to disclose their comment histories. Nate explained, "The social responsibility of comments is increasingly emphasized."

This policy by Nate is due to the 'malpler balloon effect.' As the two major portals, Naver and Kakao, successively stopped comment services on entertainment news, malplers massively moved to Nate and Instagram earlier this year.

Naver stopped the comment service on entertainment news starting in March and also made public the history of comments users had written on news articles. Previously, Naver allowed users to decide freely whether to disclose their news comments. According to Naver Data Lab, the total number of comments on Naver decreased from 867,011 as of February 28 to 389,759 as of the previous day, and the number of comments violating regulations sharply dropped from 4,709 to 546 during the same period. Recently, Naver updated its 'AI Cleanbot,' which uses AI technology to analyze the context of comment sentences and filter out malpl. The AI Cleanbot automatically detects and blinds comments containing abusive language and slang.

Kakao also eliminated the comment service on entertainment news in October last year, and in February added 'discrimination and hate' to the comment reporting criteria in the news comment services on the portal Daum and KakaoTalk #Tab. Additionally, functions to manage the exposure of comment areas, such as 'hide' and 'collapse,' were introduced. Following these strengthened comment sanctions, reports of malpl increased, while abusive and hateful expressions decreased. In the month of March after the reform, the number of comment reports doubled compared to before the reform, and even in May, after the 21st National Assembly election, reports increased by 14% compared to before the reform.