Naver to Block Comments at the Bottom of Politics and Election Sections During Local Election Period

On March 19, Naver announced the launch of its local election section and stated that it will not provide comments at the bottom of articles in the politics and election sections until the conclusion of the 9th Nationwide Local Elections on June 3, 2026.

The overall comment aggregation area will be sorted only by the most recent order, and as before, only accounts that have completed identity verification can post up to three comments per article.

Naver plans to introduce a new system next month that will automatically close comments on articles where a high proportion of comments are blocked by Cleanbot. Cleanbot, the artificial intelligence-based malicious comment detection system first introduced in the industry in 2019, continues to strengthen its training to eradicate malicious comments by targeting not only profanity, sexually explicit, and violent language but also hate speech, derogatory, and discriminatory expressions.

Naver is reviewing the adoption of a system in which comments are closed on articles that exceed a certain threshold of Cleanbot-blocked comments, and this is being considered for all news sections except for politics and elections.

Suhyang Kim, leader at Naver, said, "Naver will continue to make technical and institutional efforts so that the comment section can serve as a healthy communication space," adding, "We aim to provide a more reliable news consumption environment and further enhance our services."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.