Input 2021.01.12 14:01 | Revision 2021.01.12 15:26
Abuse of the top market share in portals to deceive consumers and exclude competitors
Victory of’literature students’ caught by algorithm manipulation
The discovery of the manipulation of the Naver search algorithm was a victory of the’literature student’ effort. This is the story of six employees of the Fair Trade Commission who sanctioned Naver shopping, video and real estate abuse of market power last year. Even though he was not an IT expert, he learned an unfamiliar computer language, and after persistent research, he proved that the Naver search results were deceived by consumers. In order to refute Naver’s defense logic, he also showed a passion for buying and selling his own house through’Naver Real Estate’. The Fair Trade Commission selected them as’Fair Fair Person of the Year 2020′.
The Fair Trade Commission announced on the 12th that it has selected the service industry supervisory department Ha Eun-kwang, Lee Yoo-jin, Jung So-young, Kim Kyung-won, and investigator Lee Jung-min, and the corporate group policy department secretary Kim Hyun-ju as the fair person of the year 2020.
First, the FTC imposed a penalty of 26.7 billion won (26.7 billion won in shopping and 200 million won in video) for Naver’s first exposure of its services by manipulating search algorithms in the shopping and video sector. This is because Naver has determined that it has distorted competition by giving preference to the company by manipulating its search rankings and showing its products or videos first.
The Fair Trade Commission also imposed a penalty of 1,032 billion won for the act of preventing Naver from providing real estate information provided to it to a third party while contracting with a real estate information company (CP). The FTC explained that Naver Real Estate, which has a high market share, abused this and prevented CPs from providing real estate information to competitors such as Kakao, thereby hindering competitors from entering the market.
The Naver case was considered very tricky even inside the FTC. Algorithm manipulation is because it has a professional character that is difficult for the general public to prove, not IT experts. However, it was the power of’persistence’ that was able to solve the case in the end. In the algorithm case, Lee Yoo-jin (7th grade public loan), Jeong So-young (60 times of acts), Kim Gyeong-won (59 times), secretary Kim Hyun-ju (51 times), and investigator Lee Jung-min (lawyer) were employed, all of whom majored in economics, administration, and English literature It was far from IT technology because it was a’literary student’.
There was no giving up. Whenever the forensic of evidence collected through two field investigations was carried out, the result like a password was poured out, but it stuck tenaciously. When the concept was studied and personal study was insufficient, the FTC’s internal computing expert was invited to teach. This’intensive tutoring’ continued throughout the investigation. In the past, I asked an employee who worked at Naver and got a statement for two days. As a result, they proved Naver’s algorithmic manipulation and received a penalty of tens of billions of dollars from the committee.
“Although the algorithmic case is controversial around the world, it is difficult to prove the suspicion because the algorithm case itself is so complex and professional,” said Seong-geun Kim, head of the service industry monitoring section of the Fair Trade Commission. “Employees did not miss the part that could be skipped, and investigated to reveal the illegality,” he said.
If there was not enough evidence, I made it myself. Officer Ha Eun-kwang (50 times), who was in charge of the real estate case, just happened to buy and sell an apartment in Sejong City during the investigation period. This was to prove that if information was provided to Naver, it could not be provided to other companies. This case was eventually adopted as final evidence and used to prove the allegations.
In particular, secretary Kim Gyeong-won took the vice-seat of finance in the 59th time, and secretary So-young Jeong was in the top 10 in the 60th time. These are all women and are considered key talents who will lead the future FTC. The fact that the Fair Trade Commission selected them as Fair Person of the Year is known as the result of comprehensive consideration of the difficulty and symbolism of the case.
Naver said it would appeal against the FTC sanctions. In its position, Naver said, “We are very sorry that the FTC has made a decision that essentially infringes on the business activities of the business operator without sufficient review and concern.” It has nothing to do with the exclusion of other companies.”
The FTC will continue to focus on solving the monopoly of large platform companies. This is because the platform business, a new industry, exceeds the scale of the existing industry, and a new type of’GapJil’ is pouring out.
It is known that the review by the Ministry of Legislation on the’Act on Fair Online Platform Brokerage Transactions’ (Online Platform Fairness Act), which was announced by the Fair Trade Commission in September last year, is in the final stage. It is highly likely that it will be presented to the National Assembly within this month after going through the vice ministers’ meeting on the 21st and the state council on the 26th. This law is intended to prevent the slump of online distribution platforms such as Naver, Kakao, and the People of Delivery.