The Internet Will Be Clean

“Well, replies disappear! It’s strange! Boring! It’s no fun without replies.”

“Lots of curses which always existed on the internet disappeared. Will it be cleaner?”

Netizens are puzzled now because corresponding replies disappeared which were under news articles of their familiar internet portal sites.

Recently, there has been a wave of cleaning the “reply culture” which has stirred controversy over indecency of the internet.

Portal sites such as Naver, Empas, Media Daum, and Yahoo Korea are leading the efforts. Until now, operators of the portal sites have had trouble with corresponding replies which have been used as a path for internet users to curse, disseminate false facts and obscenity, and vilify others.

Yahoo Korea and Empas plan to introduce a “trackback” function in reply spaces below news articles in the middle of August. “Trackback” is a remote tracker of replies which connects the messages with their blog made on the portal sites if someone leaves messages in the space. It is designed to prevent indecent replies by allowing access to blogs of those who left messages and to see who they are.

Naver introduced an “open reply” function on news articles on July 7. Searching news automatically led to replies as well as news articles from before. Now, only those who opt for the function can see replies as well. Naver removed the reply space of related articles on “genital exposure” which took place on a live entertainment show called “Music Camp” on MBC so that nobody can reply.

Nate dotcom is operating a “reply recommendation and objection” system from March. Replies which gain recommendation from netizens are posed on the upper part of the list, and those which receive a lot of objections as they contain works such as curses are pushed down to the lower part of it so that fewer people will see them. This system will enable netizens to voluntarily screen out low-quality replies.

Media Daum blocked replying function on articles which have too many replies for its operators to manage them, such as a recent shooting spree at an observation point in Yeoncheon County, Gyeonggi Province. In addition to that, Daum is running a menu through which netizens can report replies full of personal information leakage, curses, personal attacks, and so forth to its operating team right away.

Such a self-clean movement of portal sites is their self-rescue plan in response to the Information and Communication Ministry’s announcement that they will adopt ID verification on the internet users until October.

zozo@donga.com