[Asia Economy Reporter Buaeri] Naver has abolished the 'Ranking News' feature that displayed the most viewed articles in order.
On the 23rd, according to Naver, the existing 'Most Viewed News' service, which was provided based on the total articles from media outlets using metrics such as views and comments, has been discontinued and replaced with 'Most Viewed News by Media Outlet.'
Users had previously been able to access categories such as Politics, Economy, Society, Lifestyle & Culture, World, and IT/Science on PC to check the 'Most Viewed News' aggregated across all media outlets. This section is now replaced by 'Ranking News by Media Outlet.' Currently, when accessing this page, a notice stating 'Preparing Ranking Home by Media Outlet' appears.
The news articles that were ranked up to 10th place on Naver News PC screen are now replaced by 'Most Viewed News by Media Outlet.' According to Naver, articles from 5 media outlets are shown at once, with each of the 71 media outlets having an equal chance to display one article.
Additionally, while reading an article, the ranking of that media outlet appears on the right side of the screen. For example, if a user clicks on an article from Asia Economy, the top 5 most viewed articles from Asia Economy are displayed.
This revision is interpreted as an extension of Naver's policy to minimize controversies over news intervention by switching news recommendations to artificial intelligence (AI) and introducing personalized recommendation technology.
Naver has long been embroiled in controversies over 'news editing intervention' from political circles. Recently, the issue of news main exposure was raised by Yoon Young-chan, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, in an incident involving a message saying 'Tell them to bring Kakao in,' which brought portal news editing back into the spotlight. On the 14th, members of the National Assembly's Science, Technology, Information and Broadcasting Committee and the Political Affairs Committee from the People Power Party visited Naver headquarters to protest suspicions of manipulation of news search algorithms.
Han Seong-sook, CEO of Naver, is appearing as a witness at the comprehensive government audit on the Office for Government Policy Coordination and others during the Political Affairs Committee meeting held at the National Assembly on the 22nd. Photo by Yoon Dong-joo doso7@
At the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee audit held the previous day, this issue was raised again. Yoon Jae-ok, a member of the People Power Party, asked Han Seong-sook, CEO of Naver, who appeared as a witness, "Is there no human involvement?" regarding suspicions of news manipulation.
CEO Han replied, "In the first audit, humans were involved in editing, but that part has now been improved," emphasizing again that "editing is done by algorithms created by developers" and AI editing.
Naver has introduced an AI-based recommendation system called AiRS to enable users to consume personalized recommended articles and subscribe to media outlets. This service, applied to the 'MY News' section since April last year, delivers about 20,000 articles to users. Naver stated, "The concentration on specific articles has been alleviated," and "As article consumption has diversified and consumption by subscribed media outlets has become more prominent, we have abolished the ranking and will strengthen rankings by each media outlet."
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