South Korea fake news law: solution or excuse for censorship?

Alright, let’s kick off a new blog section where we’ll talk about interesting things happening in South Korea. Today we are going to talk about the South Korea fake news law.

About time, Goguma, the blog is about Korea, remember?

Okay, yes, but interesting things don’t always happen. In this case, Korea has decided to crack down on fake news and manipulation on social media. To do this, they passed a law (in Korean it’s called 허위조작정보 근절법) that forces large platforms to actively fight fake news.

Great, Goguma. Nobody wants fake news, right?

Well, for me this law, even if it has good intentions, is dangerous because it’s making platforms responsible for filtering content. In other words, platforms will be the ones initially responsible for deciding whether a post is false or not, and sometimes that’s impossible to do properly in a few minutes or hours. Even if the intention is good, we’re giving these companies enormous power, and they will use it.

Does this only affect Korean platforms?

No, this affects all platforms with over a million users, no matter where they’re from. From what I’ve found, it affects the biggest ones, but I’m not sure if it also affects Bluesky; what I am fairly sure of is that Mastodon is not affected, at least for now. One more reason to use it.

But not everything on social media is true or meant to be. Aren’t there limits to this law?

Well, satire and parody are excluded from the start. But that line is very thin, and given that there will be multi-million-dollar fines for non-compliance, it’s expected that enforcement will be strict. And of course, there will be false positives.

But there will be safeguards, right? Korea is a democratic country.

Well, of course there will be, timing matters. The procedure is as follows:

• First, a user reports a comment as disinformation. Anyone can do this.
• The affected platform decides whether to remove the reported content or not.
• If there’s disagreement, the case goes to a dispute mediation subcommittee.
• If there’s still no agreement, it can go to a judicial process.

Even though they intend to have safeguards, which is good, these steps will take days, weeks, or months, and sometimes that matters. Even if the first steps are quick, a judicial process will clearly take a long time. By the time it’s resolved, it might not even be news anymore.

I still don’t see the problem, Goguma. Give me an example.

Alright, alright. Let’s look at a fictional example (seriously, I’m making this up, please don’t come take my visa, officer, I’m a good Goguma).

Imagine that, for whatever reason, you’ve found out that a politician has done something illegal. Say, for example, they diverted public funds. Being a good citizen, you’re going to report it to the police, as is your duty, but at the same time you doubt whether it will go anywhere, because you know this corrupt politician could use their influence to shut down the complaint. So you decide it might be a good idea to make the facts public on social media. See the problem here?

If the platform considers that fake news (which is reasonable, since only you know it and you can’t show proof), it will block and delete your post. That’s why I don’t like platforms that rely on algorithms: they have too much power to decide what’s true and what isn’t.

So how do we decide what’s true and what isn’t? Fake news needs to be stopped too.

That’s impossible, and even less so quickly. In easy, obvious cases it’s simple to confirm whether something is fake news, especially when it’s related to science. But in most other cases, it simply can’t be done. That’s why I don’t like this law.

So what would you do?

I would invest in education, trying to build critical thinking in society. I know this is idealistic and that thinking is hard work. Many people don’t like seeing other ideas and are happy living in their echo chamber. Good for them, but I think we should teach people to cross-check information online. People can’t keep believing the first nonsense the algorithm throws in their face.

But with AI it’s very hard to tell.

Correct, with the rise of AI-generated fake images and videos, this is becoming an almost impossible task, and even less so quickly. That’s why, for me, the only way forward is education and fostering critical thinking. Any other shortcut means giving up freedom of expression, with everything that implies, in order to try to solve a problem they won’t be able to solve. Sure, in exchange, they’ll get to filter whatever they want.

So what do you all think? Do you agree with this kind of regulation? How would you fight fake news? I’ll read you in the comments.