Where Have All Those Haters Gone?

Creating Ghost Accounts on Global SNS and Sending Malicious DMs

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Jin-gyu Lee] As domestic portals have suspended their entertainment and sports news comment services, malicious commenters have disappeared from these portals. Instead, they are massively moving to global social networking services (SNS) such as Facebook and Instagram.

According to the IT (Information and Communications Technology) industry on the 2nd, malicious commenters exploit the fact that global SNS allow account creation without separate identity verification procedures to create numerous ghost accounts and post malicious comments or send direct messages (DMs) containing abusive language.

These 'malicious comment-only' accounts, temporarily created to post malicious comments or abusive DMs and easily deleted afterward, are proliferating recklessly. As a result, there have been continuous cases of damage caused by malicious comments or DMs written by ghost accounts on Facebook and Instagram.

Shin Min-a, a former member of the girl group I Love, recently attempted an extreme act but was rescued by police who responded to a report. She revealed the malicious DMs sent through Instagram and pleaded for the malicious comments directed at her to stop. Mina, a former member of the idol group AOA, also disclosed abusive DMs sent from ghost accounts and expressed her distress.

As the situation worsened, Instagram, along with Facebook, decided to introduce a 'comment warning' feature using artificial intelligence (AI) technology. This feature notifies commenters before posting that their negative comments may be perceived as offensive by others, encouraging them to cancel the comment or use milder expressions.

Instagram currently applies a function based on 'machine learning' that automatically detects and reports posts, malicious content, and malicious comments intended for defamation. It has also introduced a 'comment filtering' feature that automatically filters malicious comments during live broadcasts.

However, Instagram stated that it does not intend to abolish the comment service like domestic portals. Instagram said, "Since free communication among users is essential, rather than completely blocking users' expression due to malicious comments, we will clearly identify and remove only the negative and unhealthy parts."

Nevertheless, industry voices point out that unlike domestic portals that eliminated comment services despite the risk of traffic decline, relying solely on comment warning or filtering functions has limitations in eradicating the malicious comment culture. An industry official noted, "Unless the comment service is completely stopped, it is unrealistic to eradicate malicious commenters through AI-based pre-warning functions."

Meanwhile, Naver suspended the comment service for entertainment news from March and made all users' past comments on news publicly accessible. Kakao abolished the entertainment news comment service in October last year and added 'discrimination/hate' to the comment reporting criteria in the news comment services of portal Daum and KakaoTalk #Tab in February. Nate also discontinued the entertainment news comment service in July and disclosed users' comment histories. Additionally, in August, Naver, Kakao, and Nate all temporarily suspended the comment services for sports news.