KCC announces stricter platform guidelines for user protection

Economy

Published: 08 Oct. 2023, 07:00

KCC announces stricter platform guidelines for user protection

Measures to improve value-added telecommunications business operators’ responsibility [JOONGANG ILBO]

The Korean government is squeezing platform companies to come up with stricter measures to protect users, raising tension across the industry.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) on Thursday announced stricter guidelines to expand the scope of platform operators and their responsibility to protect users.

Under the proposed revision on the Enforcement Decree of the Telecommunications Business Act, platform operators for both free and paid services will be required to notify users when service is suspended for more than two hours to prevent damages caused by service failure.

The existing provision only demands paid service operators to make notifications when the failure lasts longer than four hours.

It means that messenger application Kakaotalk, a secondhand marketplace applications Karrot and Toss, and a finance-banking application will be subject to the decree, once amended.

The move comes as the current law is “insufficient to fully compensate the users’ losses, such as when Kakao's meltdown caused by a fire at its data center last Oct. 15, led to material damage,” the KCC said.

The Kakao meltdown resulted in more than 40 million users being unavailable to use its services, from messaging and payments to ride-hailing and music streaming for five days.

Lee Dong-kwan, the new chairman of the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) at a cabinet meeting held at Government Complex in central Seoul on Wednesday. [NEWS1]

The media watchdog will also narrow down the scope of exempted liability, increasing chances where users could receive compensation regardless of the materiality of the negligence.

The current system only obligates the operators to compensate damages [limited to] the cases of gross negligence. Per the commission’s recommendation, the operators should cover the losses coming from the data center or DDoS-related disruptions, if they are found to have negligence in the case.

The commission will also improve the collective dispute mediation system to allow a large number of users or groups to seek remedies swiftly. Under the current system, individual users who experienced service failure are required to file complaints separately.

“As digital platform services expand their influence in various aspects of citizens' daily lives, corresponding social responsibilities must be fulfilled,” Lee Dong-kwan, the chairman of the commission, said.

Issues related to platform operations have come to the surface constantly. Recently, Daum, the second largest Korean portal, faced public scrutiny as its Asiad cheering site ignited the problem of manipulating online public opinion, as more than 93 percent of the endorsements were for China, not Korea. Now, the case is under investigation by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo on Wednesday called for the establishment of an interagency team to counter manipulation of public opinion, referring to the recent issue on the Korean portal site, Daum.

“To prevent a situation where disinformation causes irrevocable loss and negative social influence, the government will support amending the Information and Communications Network Act to use automatic Macro programs, if needed,” the second vice minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT, Park Yun-Kyu said.

Platform operators reacted with concern as the commission’s recommendation could be interpreted as a de facto order mandating them to follow necessarily.

Platform operators are scrambling to seek their own solution amid the unexpected onslaught from the government.

Naver, the largest portal in Korea, is currently under the scrutiny of the commission because there was an allegation that the company manipulated algorithms supporting news searches and ranking. Naver reformed its news services and improved its page dedicated to fact-checking and corrections.

Daum replaced its news comment section featuring a real-time chat room-style system “Timetalk,” which automatically deletes the rooms after 24 hours have passed since publication. Daum discontinued its click cheering service from Monday and said the “macro manipulation which caused an unusual phenomenon on Sunday, actually came from two different IP addresses.”

Yet these measures are not enough to satisfy politicians, who are reportedly considering summoning executives of Naver and Kakao corporations for parliamentary inspection.

BY KWEN YU-JIN [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]