[?Hate Society] "Hate Speech is Secondary Harm"... Naver and Kakao to Establish Guidelines

Launch of So-called Discrimination and Hate Speech Committee with Experts from Law, Linguistics, and Sociology
Guidelines to be Announced Early Next Year...Guaranteeing 'Freedom of Expression' While Preventing Secondary Harm

Editor's NoteWith 307 casualties and 155 deaths, the entire nation was deeply shocked by the 'Itaewon Disaster.' At this time, the long-standing 'hatred' is stirring again. Its types and forms are diverse. As the government announced support measures for the victims, reactions ranged from "Why should I pay taxes for an accident that happened while they were dancing and having fun?" to baseless suspicions such as "Groups of Chinese people pushed them," along with rampant racial and gender division. In hateful posts, there are neither perpetrators nor victims. Perpetrators become victims by other hateful perpetrators and spread like an epidemic in an instant. Ultimately, the only way to stop this is through our society's self-purification efforts. Looking back on the hectic two days after the disaster, we examined where we should go to escape a hateful society.

[Asia Economy Reporter Yuri Choi] Portal companies such as Naver and Kakao are jointly responding to hate and discriminatory expressions. They plan to create unified standards and voluntary regulations for hateful expressions and receive support from an external review committee. This is a measure to prevent secondary and tertiary damages caused by the increasing hateful expressions online.

According to the industry on the 1st, Naver and Kakao launched the 'Discrimination and Hate Expression Subcommittee (tentative name)' last month, centered around the Korea Internet Self-Governance Organization (KISO). Experts from KISO, the portal industry, and related academic fields such as law, linguistics, and sociology participated. The subcommittee is defining hateful expressions and creating basic policies on how to handle related posts. Portal companies will apply the guidelines once they are established and plan to create a review committee within KISO to handle difficult cases.

So far, the subcommittee has held four meetings referencing Naver and Kakao's internal standards and major cases. They plan to complete and announce the guidelines by the first quarter of next year. Initially, they will establish standards for expressions and context in posts and plan to discuss images and videos in the long term.

The industry's joint response is due to the increasing problem of discriminatory and hateful expressions online. The same was true during the Itaewon disaster. Posts blaming the victims, mocking them, or mentioning the nationality of foreign victims with hateful expressions have appeared, raising concerns about secondary and tertiary harm.

Currently, portal companies manage hateful posts according to their internal operating policies. Naver has a dedicated monitoring team and an emergency reporting center that accepts reports on ▲illegal, obscene, and youth-harmful posts ▲posts that harm users ▲posts that degrade service quality. They guide that severe profanity, vulgar expressions, content causing fear, anxiety, discomfort, or insult are subject to action, but due to the variety of cases, they prioritize taking immediate action. When a report is received, they first block the post and then accept objections from the author.

Kakao has its own operating policy with judgment criteria for hate speech and information causing hatred. For comments, even without reports, if they violate the policy, they are analyzed by the AI technology 'SafeBot' and blind-processed. For other posts or information within KakaoTalk, if a report is received, the post is blocked or service restrictions are imposed on the author.

However, since operating policies differ and cases vary, detailed regulation is difficult. There is also a risk of disputes with users over freedom of expression. The subcommittee's purpose is to raise awareness of hateful expressions with common standards and strengthen self-regulation.

Park Ellie, head of KISO's policy team, said, "There is no legal regulation, so we rely on voluntary regulation under internal industry terms. Even if portals strengthen policies, problems continue due to balloon effects moving to other platforms, so we aim to raise users' awareness of the issue."