April 18, 2024

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[THE INVESTOR] Social networking giant Facebook continues to be mired in controversy in South Korea after clashes with local users, telecom companies as well as the government over the nature of some of its business activities in the country.

The US-based social networking company is set to face an investigation by the state-run Korea Communications Commission after a local consumer rights group claimed that Facebook violated the law by sending out fake notifications designed to lure users into downloading its Messenger app.

The move came as Korean users on online forums have been posting complaints about Facebook’s false notifications that encourage users who have not done so to download Messenger.

Facebook first notifies users that they have unread messages, but does not allow users to read them unless they download Messenger. Once the app is installed, users sometimes find that they had not received actual messages from other users as suggested, but mere notifications from Facebook displaying other users who are also using Messenger.

The Green Consumer Network argued that these false notifications violate Korea’s Telecommunications Business Act by deceiving users and hampering their freedom of choice.

The act prohibits business operators from taking actions that “undermine users’ interests” as well as “prohibit users’ freedom of choice and limit their freedom to install other software”

“Facebook’s fake notifications deceive consumers into installing the Messenger application, hurting consumers’ interests and interfering with their freedom of choice,” the Green Consumer Network’s ICT Consumer Policy Research Institute said in a statement.

Facebook Korea has responded to the allegations with a statement saying that its use of notifications to encourage users to download Messenger did not restrict consumers’ choice.

“Facebook Messenger is a mobile app that can be freely installed and uninstalled by users. Not installing the app does not cause any restrictions on using the Facebook app or other smartphone functions,” the firm said.

Adding to its woes, Facebook Korea is involved in another controversy on an entirely different issue -- data traffic costs. Last month, it clashed with a local telecom provider over sharing the costs that go into maintaining the quality and speed of Facebook’s data-heavy services.

The issue, which has also sparked an investigation from Korea Telecommunications Commission, emerged in December when SK Broadband subscribers began experiencing a slowdown in their Facebook connections as well as its photo-sharing app Instagram.

According to SK Broadband, there were initially two ways to connect to Facebook in Korea: via a direct connection to Facebook’s server in Hong Kong and via rerouting to a local cache server in Korea operated by local telecom provider KT.

The cache server is used to save online content locally in temporary storage, called a cache, and in turn improve the connection speed for accessing foreign internet services. Facebook currently pays KT to use its cache server.

SK Broadband argued that Facebook deliberately cut off its link to KT’s cache server last December, after which the two firms began to clash with each other.

KT is currently the only Korean telecom firm that has set up a cache server for Facebook. Others, such as SK Broadband and LG Uplus, can therefore access Facebook’s content using KT’s network. SK Broadband argued that Facebook intentionally blocked SK Broadband users’ access to the KT network, diverting them to the slower Hong Kong server.

To improve the slow connection, Facebook said it had suggested SK Broadband create its own local cache server, offering to pay for the server installation costs only. However, negotiations were halted after the telecom provider asked Facebook to pay for the costs of using and operating the server.

Facebook Korea asserted that it is a content provider and therefore is not mandated to pay for such costs which remain in the realm of network providers. SK Broadband has argued otherwise.

The incident ignited a debate over net neutrality, a principle that internet service providers and governments should treat all the data on the internet in the same way without discriminating by user, content, website or platform.

It has become a particularly thorny issue in Korea, where foreign and local internet service providers are subject to differing regulations regarding network usage costs.

As the volume of Facebook’s data traffic continues to increase, largely due to the growing number of videos shared on the platform, local telecom providers are arguing that Facebook must bear the costs, noting that major Korean internet content firms like Naver and Kakao pay fees proportionate to the amount of data their users consume.

In addition, Facebook has consistently come under fire for its lax monitoring of the ads that appear on its platform, some of which are sexually inappropriate or misleading. Though Facebook removes problematic ads based on internal monitoring and user reports, some critics have asserted that the platform operator is not doing enough to address such issues as it prioritizes ad revenue.

The string of controversies around Facebook comes as the social networking site takes a bigger presence among both users and third-party businesses tied to the platform.

According to local app analytics firm WiseApp, the Facebook mobile app has the 10th-largest number of Android smartphone users in Korea. Facebook Messenger ranks 21st while Facebook’s photo-sharing app Instagram ranks 26th under the same criteria.

By Sohn Ji-young/The Korea Herald (jys@heraldcorp.com)