Naver and Daum, South Korea’s two largest web portals, both made changes to their online news services. The companies announced it was an effort to minimize the side effects of malicious comments posted on news articles. But many believe the portals are taking prior measures ahead of the parliamentary elections next April.

On June 8, Daum, the web portal run by Kakao, changed its comment service on news articles to Time Talk, a real-time chatting service. In the past, the portal displayed some comments first according to recommendations or views in favor or against an issue, but now users can exchange various opinions in real time.

The most eye-catching feature of Time Talk is that users can only post comments within 24 hours after the article is released. After 24 hours, the window for posting comments disappears. People will not be able to post comments or read other people’s opinions. Daum explained they made the change after considering the time when users actively read the articles after they were released.

Earlier last month, Kakao separated Daum into a company-in-company (CIC) and announced, “We will improve the comment service to a real-time communication method to reduce adverse functions, such as the over-representation of comments by minority users and inappropriate comments that don’t disappear.” Users will no longer be able to check the comments posted with the existing comment service from the portal page, but Kakao will save them separately. If users want to save the comments posted before Time Talk is introduced, they must send an e-mail request by September 5.

Some people suggested that Kakao may be shutting down its comment service in news, since Daum will restrict the online comment service to 24 hours and not even leave a record of them.

Song Kyung-jae, a professor of social economics at Sangji University said, “Deleting comments within 24 hours is the easiest way to control comments and is a wrong method that penalizes people with good intentions to engage in sound discussions through comments.” He further voiced concern saying, “It can result in a balloon effect, where unrestrained fake news can spread through malicious comments on overseas social media, such as Twitter.”

On Thursday, Naver also began exposing parts of the ID, nickname, user restriction status of users blocked from commenting on news articles in their personal profiles. Now, everyone can read all the comments that such restricted users have posted so far. Before, only the person restricted from making comments could see their “suspension” status, but now other people can see as well. So the latest measure is practically a public labeling of the so-called “malicious commenters.”

Naver also added a policy to end malicious comments, such as having people take a quiz in order to have the restriction lifted. In the past, the restriction was automatically lifted when a certain amount of time passed. But now, such people will only be able to post comments after they take a quiz with questions like, “Are cyber insults a type of online rights infringement?”

Inside and outside the industry, people voiced suspicions that the latest action by the nation’s two major web portals showed that they were conscious of critical views held by politicians, mainly the People Power Party (PPP) and the government. The PPP claimed that the portal services were trying to increase their political clout by redisplaying “real-time popular search words” ahead of the parliamentary elections. Recently, Park Dae-chul, head of the PPP policy committee, even warned, “I hope the two major portals do not make the mistake of creating a playground for people to manipulate and instigate public opinion ahead of the parliamentary elections.” The PPP is currently promoting an amendment of the Act on Press Arbitration and Damage Remedies, which defines the news service of portals as the press.