hankyoreh

By Koo Bon-kwon, Senior Staff Writer　

Controversy is brewing after it was revealed that Samsung Electronics demanded that the Naver portal site close a post in order for it to be taken down after a user posted a critical review of one of the company’s new smartphone on a portal bulletin board.

After using Samsung Electronics’s Galaxy 2 smartphone for two weeks, Mr. Ham, a power blogger on IT issues, posted a review on his Naver blog of the product entitled “Nine Nasty Flaws of the Galaxy 2” on May 2. Han personally bought the product and used it, something completely separate from Samsung’s official trial event. This post disappeared from his blog on May 6 in accordance with a demand by Samsung.

When Ham’s post was blocked, so were the over 1,400 comments it had received. Samsung took the same measures again another Naver power blogger, Mr. Kim, who posted a review post entitled, “Three reasons why the Motorola Atrix is better than the Galaxy 2.” Kim had planned to do a follow-up post entitled, “Three reasons why the Galaxy 2 is better than the Motorola Atrix.”

This incident has again illustrated that Internet opinion controls established with the cited reason of preventing defamation can be used in an arbitrary and biased manner. Moreover, it also exposed the limits to corporate blog marketing in the form of user experience reviews.

Crucial is whether the temporary blocking process was conducted in a transparent and fair manner. According to current telecommunication laws, in cases where it is difficult to judge whether a post infringes on somebody‘s rights or a fight is expected, the portal site may temporarily block access within 30 days.

There is much room for the use of arbitrary and biased standards, however.

An official from one portal site said, “Of the thousands of temporary deletion requests we receive per month claiming defamation, many are from corporations and politicians.”

This indicates a system adopted on the justification of blocking invasions of personal privacy are also used more insidiously as a means for powerful groups to control online opinion.

Corporations, too, like to use this regulation to block the spread of critical posts.

An official from one marketing company that handles blog marketing hinted, “We respond actively to critical posts, and advertisers react poorly to critical reviews, asking why they should pay money to listen to criticism.”

Regarding this, Samsung Electronics’ public relations office said, “The matter was in many ways a communication failure that arose due to insufficient understanding of the particularities of the Internet at the Galaxy 2’s marketing sector.”

There is also debate about the fairness of review marketing. Most review marketing takes place with compensation exchanging hands. The problem is that this is rarely revealed, so the objectiveness of the review is easily lost. Some firms even filter out critical posts from the very beginning by getting prior confirmations. Recently, one mobile phone community was conducting a user review event for the Galaxy 2, with the phone being provided for free or at a discount based on the favorableness of the review.

In this regard, the example of Samsung Electronics’ distribution of compensation for reviews of its Omnia phones has significant implications. Samsung conducted a series of blog review events when it released the Omnia in 2009. Almost no bloggers revealed if they had received compensation or free phones, and the reviews were almost entirely positive.

“It is my hope that bloggers reveal whether they received a free device for their review,” said Myeong Seung, CEO of Tatter and Media. “Getting paid for a review is not a problem, but it is a problem if you do not disclose your compensation.”

The Federal Trade Commission of the United States has since December 2009 required bloggers to reveal if they received corporate support or payment when they write product reviews.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]