[Oh-sang Kweon (권오상), head of the Digital Future Research Institute] False and manipulated information is not a problem limited to some users or individual posts. It combines with large platforms’ search, recommendation, sharing, comments, reviews and advertising monetisation and spreads across society in a short time. It can lead to damage to personal reputation and property, as well as distort consumer choices, amplify social conflict, and undermine elections and public decision-making. As AI spreads, the cost of producing false information has fallen, so existing responses centred on post hoc deletion and punishment are not enough. There is now a need for institutional design that makes the structure through which information circulates more transparent and trustworthy.

That is the significance of the revised enforcement decree under the Information and Communications Network Act. The revision specifies the scope of large information and communications service providers as information intermediary services with 1 million or more average daily users over the previous three months as of the end of the prior year. It also clarified the scope of responsibility for posters with large social impact based on subscriber numbers and views. The aim is not to regulate all businesses and all expression uniformly, but to impose differentiated responsibilities based on the scale of information distribution and its social influence.

It is particularly important that it institutionalises reporting procedures, self-regulatory operating policies, transparency reports, cooperation with fact-checking organisations and the role of a transparency centre. Users reporting false and manipulated information will present the location of the content, the reason for the report and supporting materials, and platforms will establish procedures to receive and process them. That reduces abuse of reporting while increasing predictability in remedies for harm. Transparency reports can serve as a mechanism for society to scrutinise what standards and procedures a platform used in its response. Fact-checking organisations and the transparency centre can help remove misunderstandings that the government directly judges truth or falsehood and contribute to building a verification ecosystem based on independence and expertise.

Similar efforts are under way overseas. The European Union is strengthening platforms’ systemic responsibilities, risk assessments, transparency reporting and external verification through the Digital Services Act and a code of practice on disinformation. Australia is also institutionalising responses to false information through private codes of practice and a co-regulatory model. Discussions on information integrity emphasised by the United Nations and the OECD point in the same direction. The core is not that the state directly judges all information, but that a structure is created in which platforms’ procedural responsibilities, independent verification and user rights protection operate together.

The biggest change after implementation will be how platforms respond. Until now, there have been many complaints that even when reports are filed, the processing standards and outcomes are opaque. Going forward, procedures from receiving reports to review, action, notification, appeals, record management and publication of reports may become clearer. For influential posters, predictability of legal responsibility for distributing false and manipulated information will increase, and for users, channels for remedies and objections will widen. Above all, it could be an opportunity for responses to shift from a simple deletion focus to one centred on transparency, procedures and accountability.

Even so, the success of the system depends on the sophistication of enforcement. Large information and communications service providers must quickly overhaul service types, reporting systems, internal review standards, user notification methods and transparency reporting formats. In the early stages, both businesses and users may experience considerable confusion. There is therefore a need to set a guidance period at the start of implementation so businesses can refine operating policies and procedures and the government can check on-the-ground problems and supplement the system. This is not regulatory retreat but a practical measure to ensure the system takes root.

Because countering false and manipulated information is a difficult task in which freedom of expression and user protection, and platform responsibility and public trust, collide, there is an even greater need for sophisticated institutional design and phased enforcement. This enforcement decree revision should be a starting point for an information integrity system to create a trustworthy digital public sphere, not a signal of tougher punishment. A trustworthy digital public sphere will be possible not through unilateral state action but when platform responsibility, user rights, independent verification and balanced government oversight operate together.