Small Business Community Warns Naver's Reinstated Star Rating System Will Lead to Malicious Abuse

"Naver Must First Establish Measures to Prevent Malicious Attacks"

The Korea Federation of Micro Enterprises has strongly objected to Naver's reinstatement of its location review star rating system, calling it “a measure that drives small business owners into endless competition and exposes them to star rating abuse.”

Exterior view of Naver headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. Photo by Yonhap News

On July 14, the federation issued an official statement, saying, “We express our deep concern and strong regret over Naver’s decision to revive the star rating system for location reviews of restaurants and cafes as of July 9, after five years. Already, self-employed communities are lamenting that they are being forced to hold excessive ‘review events’ just to beg for five-star ratings.”

The location review star rating system was originally operated by Naver to provide users with objective information about various places. However, following the so-called “fried shrimp” incident in 2021—where a small business owner, suffering from malicious reviews and star ratings, died of a cerebral hemorrhage—the negative side effects of the star rating system became a social issue, ultimately leading to its abolition.

The federation stated, “Self-employed business owners have no choice but to request rating boosts via publicity agencies or reluctantly use Naver’s keyword ads. Naver’s intention to boost advertising revenue through traffic-driven business practices amounts to squeezing the already thin wallets of small business owners, whose survival is threatened by high inflation, high interest rates, and an economic downturn.”

They added, “While Naver has allowed business owners to choose whether or not to display their store’s average star rating, it is structurally insufficient to prevent so-called ‘star rating attacks’ by malicious users, since individual ratings left by consumers cannot be hidden.”

The federation also raised concerns about the new rating calculation method. “We find it entirely unacceptable that the new star rating will include cumulative information from before 2022,” they said. “Naver’s supplementary policies, such as ‘monitoring of malicious reviewers’ and ‘limiting the review editing period,’ are woefully inadequate to prevent the actual financial harm and psychological distress that small business owners will suffer.”

They continued, “Naver must immediately implement a full-featured option to hide individual star ratings and prioritize establishing an effective protection system to provide prompt sanctions and remedies against malicious rating abuse. The association will monitor cases of harm to small business owners resulting from the reinstated star rating system and will respond head-on to the unfair practices of online platforms.”

Meanwhile, Naver stated that it has implemented a variety of safeguards to minimize harm to small business owners from malicious “star rating abuse.” The most notable is the ON/OFF option, which allows business owners to decide whether or not to display their overall star rating.

A Naver representative said, “We have revised the Place Review usage policy to prohibit indiscriminately giving ratings below three stars. In order to detect review abuse, we are operating over 20 types of automatic monitoring systems utilizing AI technologies, in addition to constant manual review by our operations team. We are responding by comprehensively reviewing various factors.”

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