Naver said on the 19th that starting that day it will launch a local elections section and will not provide comments at the bottom of the text of articles in the politics and elections sections until the end of the 9th nationwide local elections on June 3. The all-comments collection area will offer only latest-first sorting, and as before, only users who have completed identity verification can write up to three comments per article per account.
Along with this, Naver plans to introduce in April a system that automatically closes comments for articles with a high share of comments blocked by Cleanbot due to malicious content. Cleanbot, an artificial intelligence-based malicious comment detection system introduced in 2019, the first in the industry, strengthens its learning not only on profanity, sexual and violent expressions but also on hate, derogatory, and discriminatory expressions, and is working to root out malicious comments.
For articles where the share of comments blocked by Cleanbot exceeds a certain threshold, Naver is considering introducing a method of closing comments across all news sections other than politics and elections.
Naver leader Kim Su-hyang said, "Naver will continue technical and institutional efforts so that the comments area can be activated as a healthy space for communication," adding, "We will provide a more reliable news usage environment and advance our services."
Meanwhile, in February, Naver introduced a feature in the comments area that allows users to write memorial comments so they can fully express mourning and empathy while preventing hate, derogatory remarks, and secondary harm, and it is continuously strengthening Cleanbot's performance by rolling out upgrades to respond to derogatory remarks about victims and expressions that devalue life.