Aju Business Daily

SEOUL -- Facebook has been fined by South Korean telecom regulators for causing inconvenience to domestic users with an arbitrary move that allegedly caused slow internet connections.

In a decision on Wednesday, the Korea Communications Commission slapped Facebook with a fine of 396 million won (372,240 US dollars) for creating a market distortion. The American social media company was ordered to improve unfair clauses in its user agreement.

The decision followed an investigation which was launched last year on complaints among the users of two internet companies, SK Broadband and LGU+, about their slow connection speed. Users of KT had no complaints because the country's largest telecom company has a contract to provide Facebook with cache server operation services.

The contract with KT appeared to have caused trouble as SK Broadband and LGU+ have to use KT's servers for Facebook connections.  However, the watchdog accused Facebook of having distorted the market by diverting the connection routes of SK Broadband and LGU+ users to overseas servers from late 2016 without full consultations or a prior notice to users.

As complaints grew, Facebook backed down and changed its policy last year. Facebook claimed it had issued a prior notice in its user agreement that it cannot guarantee the quality of the internet connection because it is a contents provider, not an internet service company.

The watchdog said that Facebook as an influential social media company should assume responsibility for causing inconvenience to users by diverting connection routes, calling for improvement in its unfair user agreement.