Ban on online comments

Urgent need to stamp out unacceptable comments, cyber bullying

Kakao announced last week that its comments sections on entertainment news on KakaoTalk and Daum will be disabled temporarily. Kakao, the operator of the major portal Daum, will also discontinue a service to provide keywords related to specific persons by the end of the year. The real-time "hot keywords" function shown in the news tab of KakaoTalk was closed as of 1 p.m. Friday.

The announcement came following the death of South Korean pop star and actress Sulli. She was found dead at her residence Oct. 14 and her apparent suicide was presumed to have been caused by abusive online comments.

Cyber bullying and online defamation have reached a level that harms the health of the public. Kakao deserves praise for taking measures to stamp out unacceptable comments as a company that should assume social responsibility and promote the public interest. It's also encouraging that Kakao has pledged to find ways to improve its platform, including the comments sections on other news stories.

There has been an outpouring of calls to rein in cyber bullying after celebrities took their own lives after suffering abusive online comments. Nonetheless, discontinuing comments sections or requiring people to leave comments under their real names might not be a wise option. It would undermine freedom of ｅxpression and disregard the reality that online comments have already become a crucial method of communication. Abolishing online comments sections could result in more losses than gains.

Following Kakao's announcement, public attention is now on Naver, the country's largest portal operator. Naver has been using "artificial intelligence" (AI) to filter out abusive comments, but that's not enough, considering the severity of problems related to online abuse. Naver should do whatever it can to improve its online comments services fundamentally. The government and the National Assembly should also hurry to amend related laws.