The 24-48 hours immediately following the posting of a negative post online are the golden time. Missing this window will lead to the post being "indexed" by search engines or screenshots being shared on social media. Therefore, complete deletion is virtually impossible. This is the essence of the digital golden time emphasized by Shin So-hyun, CEO of White Me.
Digital defamation, the spread of false information, and malicious comments are on the rise every year. However, specialized solutions that enable victims to effectively respond are rare. Traditional law firms are expensive and require complex procedures. General digital funeral directors lack expertise, security, and standardized pricing.
Early in his startup's life, CEO Shin recruited professional monitors from the Korea Communications Standards Commission, former journalists from media outlets, and members of the same industry. He believed that true "complete deletion" was only possible with personnel who had a thorough understanding of review criteria, deletion request procedures, and platform-specific regulations.
"The challenge was convincing the market why this service was needed. Most people who suffered damage didn't know where to turn for help."
WhiteMe's core system combines crawling technology and AI to detect and analyze the spread of posts. It measures in real time the extent to which false or malicious posts are spreading across domestic portals like Naver and Kakao, various online communities, and social media platforms. It also automatically generates and processes deletion request documents that meet legal requirements.
CEO Shin explained, "Law firms excel at legal responses focused on filing lawsuits and accusations. However, post deletion takes a long time and is expensive." He added, "WhiteMe utilizes AI to quickly and efficiently process administrative deletion requests before legal action. We provide customized, data-driven reports, including keyword analysis reports, web reports, and Excel files summarizing distribution status, enabling clients to grasp the situation at a glance."
The primary customer base includes companies preparing for IPOs, self-employed individuals, and public figures and celebrities. For companies preparing for IPOs, ownership risks and misinformation about the company can be critical during the IPO review process. Since a single piece of false news can directly impact a company's valuation, online reputation management is essential from the IPO preparation stage. For self-employed individuals, even a single false or malicious review can have an immediate impact on sales. There is a significant demand for services that quickly remove false reviews intentionally posted by competitors or malicious users.
WhiteMe has processed over 300,000 cumulative content deletions and has 450 corporate clients. CEO Shin stated, "The domestic online reputation management market is characterized by rapid diffusion, anonymity, and platform decentralization." He added, "Due to the nature of domestic communities, negative posts can spread across dozens of platforms in an instant. The market size is in the hundreds of billions of won, and with the advancement of AI and deepfake technology, it is expected to grow to trillions of won in the coming years."
WhiteMe's real-time monitoring system covers major search portals like Naver, Daum, and Google, as well as major domestic communities and social media platforms like DC Inside, FM Korea, Clien, Bobaedream, and Instiz. Recently, we've received a lot of inquiries about monitoring overseas reviews from Reddit and Yahoo Japan. Automatic review monitoring is performed 24/7 based on customers' core keywords, and customers are immediately notified when new negative posts are detected. The target time from detection to notification is within one hour.
"For one self-employed business owner, a competitor's false food hygiene-related post spread across over 20 online communities in just two days, causing a sharp drop in sales. Conversely, a pre-IPO company that signed up for a monitoring service was able to delete false information about its owner within 24 hours of its IPO, allowing it to proceed with its listing without any disruption."
This includes reviewing the legal deletion requirements for targeted posts, automatically generating and submitting deletion request documents for each platform, monitoring deletion results, and reporting to customers. Because review criteria and turnaround times vary across platforms, we maintain a database of processing history for each major platform and continuously update it with efficient request paths and presentation methods.
Support for collecting evidence in conjunction with a law firm is provided to those who repeatedly post maliciously, cases that cannot be resolved through administrative deletion alone, and cases that require civil or criminal litigation. WhiteMe systematically organizes and delivers evidence, including the post's URL, posting time, distribution route, and captured images, to the law firm. CEO Shin stated, "The overall deletion success rate is currently around 93%."
WhiteMe's digital sex crime video deletion service has been one of its core businesses since its inception. CEO Shin recalled, "Witnessing the reality that most victims wander around, not knowing where to turn for help, I realized this field was absolutely necessary."
The victim support process begins with an immediate investigation of the distribution status after receiving a consultation, followed by a request for rapid deletion on domestic and international platforms, blocking of search engine exposure, and monitoring for redistribution. The entire process is kept confidential, and responses are conducted with minimal information. For distribution on overseas sites or the dark web, we collaborate with international digital sex crime response organizations to directly report to the relevant platform headquarters and utilize technology to block reuploads by registering content hashes.
"To eradicate digital sex crimes, we urgently need to strengthen the active responsibility of platform operators and improve the speed of reporting. While the Korea Communications Standards Commission has an emergency review system, in practice, deletion often takes several days. We need to introduce a legal standard mandating deletion within 24 hours of a report."
The balance between the "digital right to be forgotten" and "freedom of expression" is a key challenge facing the entire industry. WhiteMe's principles are clear: the first criterion for determining whether deletion is possible is the existence of a legal basis. We only provide services for content that satisfies legal deletion requirements, such as defamation, the spread of false information, and the unauthorized posting of personal information.
If we receive a request for legitimate criticism or deletion of public interest information, we decline to accept the request based on our internal review criteria. In fact, we do not accept requests to "delete consumer reviews of defective products." The criteria for distinguishing between false and malicious reviews and legitimate consumer complaints are the verifiability of the facts, the unusualness of the writing pattern, and the presence of exaggeration or distortion of the content.
Whitemi continues to grow, surpassing 300 million won in sales in 2022 and 1.8 billion won in 2025. CEO Shin stated, "Our goal is to grow by more than 30% annually," explaining, "Our key revenue models are subscription services for corporate customers and individual and authorized customers."
Expanding public institutions is a key growth driver. We are currently building a collaborative model with organizations directly involved in responding to digital harm, such as the Personal Information Protection Commission and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. We plan to provide a platform for monitoring false information, link it to a support system for victims of digital sex crimes, and provide solutions to address online harassment involving public officials and institutions.
Whitemi's focus this year is maximizing service processing speed through improved AI automation and achieving full-scale scale-up through expanded government partnerships.
CEO Shin emphasized, "Beyond a simple content deletion service, our goal is to build a digital immune system that uses AI to detect and respond to misinformation and deepfakes in real time." He added, "With the advancement of AI and deepfake technology, the amount of generated misinformation is rapidly increasing. Our response strategy is to 'block AI with AI.' We are continuously strengthening our capabilities to respond to damage from not only text-based misinformation, but also deepfake videos and AI-generated images."
It remains to be seen how the entrepreneur's dedication to preserving the digital golden time will transform the daily lives of those suffering from online reputation damage.
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