"I hope you *** in a car accident..." fromis_9 Chaeyoung wasn't able to suppress her tears after receiving extremely malicious comments while hosting a live broadcast through Weverse.
fromis_9 Chaeyoung Suffers From Malicious Comments During Live Broadcast
On January 17, fromis_9 member Lee Chaeyoung conducted a live broadcast through the fan communication platform introduced by HYBE, Weverse.
Initially, the broadcast was going well, until a noticeable amount of malicious comments, written in Korean. that exceeded criticism were seen several times.
There were a lot of global fans writing their comments in English, so the malicious attacks were more visible especially to Chaeyoung.
The malicious comments were combined with personal attacks on fromis_9 members Chaeyoung and Baek Jiheon, as well as abusive language toward the former's parents and sibling.
Aside from the above tweet's content, the hater also threatened the idol they will keep on bothering her even if the group disbanded or if she decided to become a non-celebrity.
Although Chaeyoung tried her best to ignore these hateful words, she eventually ended the broadcast with tears.
FLOVERs Demand HYBE & Pledis To Protect fromis_9, Other Artists Using Weverse
As a result, fromis_9's fan base FLOVER criticized HYBE and Pledis Entertainment for not taking significant measures to protect their artists.
In particular, Weverse is a fandom-communicating tool used by mostly artists from HYBE Labels, including fromis_9. Despite the extreme hate its artists gain, the application, unfortunately, doesn't have a system to automatically filter malicious comments yet.
To delete such comments, a user must go to the pain of manually reporting those that violate the terms stated in the Weverse Community Guidelines before they get flagged and deleted.
A flover took to SNS to expose the seriousness of this case, saying:
"Currently, fromis_9 has been receiving very malicious comments for about a year and three months.
Member Baek Jiheon stopped her activities for four months due to malicious comments. While artists are suffering from malicious comments, Weverse has never made any improvements.
The malicious comments in the post are the tip of the iceberg. Whenever an artist conducts a public live, malicious comments run, and the artist is suffering. I hope many people will pay attention based on this article.
We hope that punishment for malicious comments and Weverse will protect the artists."
Following this, more fromis_9 fans spread detailed information about what is happening to the group on Twitter.
When this report reached other K-pop fandoms, fans supported FLOVERs and called out HYBE as well.
- "The level of malicious comments that idols experience is getting higher day by day."
- "I'm dizzy even though I'm watching it sober."
- "The level of malicious comments is too severe?"
- "Where and what the hell is HYBE doing?"
READ MORE: Where is Jang Gyuri Now? Status of Former fromis_9 Member After Leaving Group
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Written by Eunice Dawson.