"Revival of Real-time Search" vs "Completely Different" Trend Service Controversy
Struggling to Boost Traffic... Official Service Uncertain
Naver and Kakao's trend exposure services have come under scrutiny even before their official launch. In the political sphere, criticism is mounting, calling it a 'revival of real-time search rankings (silgeom).' There are moves to regulate, emphasizing the need to secure fairness in news services first. Portal companies introduced trend exposure to prevent market share decline but have begun reconsidering the service amid public backlash.
Kakao started the beta service 'Today Bubble' on the portal Daum from the 10th. It is a service that shows keywords representing topics frequently mentioned by users online. Clicking on a keyword displays related Daum content such as blogs and cafes. Naver is also testing a similar 'Trend Topic.' It extracts and shows topics based on content frequently viewed by users across Naver services like blogs, posts, and premium content. After testing, it plans to officially launch the service at the bottom of the home screen during the app revamp in the second half of the year.
Both companies claim these services are entirely different from past real-time search rankings. Silgeom was a service that displayed rankings of search terms frequently entered by users. It faced criticism as a hotbed of public opinion manipulation, including the 2018 Druking comment manipulation scandal. As a result, Daum and Naver's silgeom services disappeared in February 2020 and February 2021, respectively.
Kakao explains that, unlike past silgeom, it is impossible to deliberately dominate interest keywords by increasing search term entries from one or two places. ▲The keyword sources include publicly available external web pages, ▲the keywords are adjusted to show those that attracted interest from various places, and ▲keywords are displayed in random combinations without ranking, differing for each user. Naver also emphasizes that the service is not based on search volume or real-time data. If it is a widely read or shared interest, even old content is shown regardless of ranking. Politically sensitive issues that could cause controversy are excluded, mainly reflecting cultural and lifestyle trends.
However, the political sphere is sharply criticizing it as a de facto revival of silgeom. Park Sung-joong, a member of the People Power Party, said, "Naver's Trend Topic is a revival of real-time search, which was problematic due to public opinion manipulation," adding, "No matter how robustly the artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm is designed, there will be no way to prevent abuse." Park Dae-chul, chairman of the People Power Party Policy Committee, also warned, "Although it is packaged as a different service, it is actually a trick to revive silgeom," and urged, "Portals should not make the mistake of creating playgrounds for public opinion manipulation and agitation ahead of next year's general election."
The government has begun preparing countermeasures. It expressed concern that dissatisfaction with portal news has led to a lack of trust in similar silgeom services. Accordingly, it plans to establish legal measures to create a fair distribution environment for news portals. Considering the already proposed amendment to the Press Act, the government intends to introduce its own bill. Recently, several amendments to the Press Act have been proposed in the National Assembly to review portal article arrangement algorithms or request profit and loss data generated from article provision.
The reason the two major portals launched the controversial trend services is due to a decline in market share. After silgeom was abolished, traffic was lost not only to competing portals like Google but also to social media. According to the website analysis page Internet Trends, Naver's market share dropped from 64.8% in March 2019 to 54.0% in March 2021. During the same period, Daum also decreased from 5.3% to 4.9%. In contrast, Google increased from 27.5% to 39.0%. Social media platforms such as Twitter and TikTok have also replaced portal functions by reflecting real-time trends.
Although trend services were introduced as a last resort, strong criticism is causing deep concerns. A decrease in traffic leads to reduced advertising revenue. An industry insider said, "We prepared a service that shows a lot of content to increase user dwell time, but at this point, even the direction and the possibility of official service are uncertain."
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