The age rating for social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has been changed to "Not available for minors" in Google's application market.

The phrase "Violent and graphic content" is listed under the rating, suggesting this action is due to the rampant spread of violent and explicit content. However, the issue is that this measure follows the recent participation of many young people in the "Jamsil Pro-Democracy Uprising."

William Barclay, a prominent conservative activist from Canada, tagged Elon Musk on X and stated, "The Lee Jae-myung regime has banned X for Korean youth. This is because Korean young people effectively used the platform to expose Lee Jae-myung's corruption/election fraud and coordinate their activities."

Barclay added, "Korea is fighting for its survival," and "Come to Korea, I'm flying there today."

According to the X customer service website, "X is not primarily designed for children, but anyone 13 years of age or older can sign up for the service."

It also states, "Accounts of minors identified as being between 13 and 18 years old are set to 'protected posts' by default," and "Identified minors will receive a request when a new person tries to follow them, and the posts of identified minors will only be visible to their followers and can only be searched by the user and their followers."

Currently, X has designated a Youth Protection Officer in accordance with South Korea's "Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection" and has notified the Korea Communications Standards Commission, submitting annual data on the operation of the Youth Protection Officer.

Previously, on January 14, the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), chaired by Kim Jong-chul, stated that it had requested X to implement measures to protect minors for its Grok service due to growing societal concerns over the dissemination of sexually exploited material and non-consensual sexual imagery through social media.

In response, after six months of no specific action, Google suddenly adjusted the app download rating.

In reality, access via PC and mobile web browsers (Safari, Chrome, etc.) is not technically blocked.

According to Google, the age rating for a specific app can be adjusted after review. Google Korea explained that Google does not change the age rating of an app itself. If a specific app exposes content that is inappropriate for its age rating and causes controversy, post-sanction measures, including blocking, will be taken.

Although X has not issued an official explanation for this change in its user age rating, making the background unclear, Hankook Ilbo reported that given the phrase "Violent and graphic content" under the X app's age rating on the Google Play Store, it is presumed to be a measure taken due to the indiscriminate exposure of violent and explicit content on X.

Hankook Ilbo also reported that X's age rating on Apple's App Store was "Available for ages 15 and up" and quoted industry insiders who predicted that "the age rating may be changed sequentially on the Apple App Store as well."

Others have raised suspicions that this is an attempt to control the growing citizen movement demanding a re-election, which has been rapidly spreading through social media.

As midnight passed on the 10th, tension heightened at the counting station in front of the Jamsil Olympic Stadium, with increased police presence and barricades installed at subway entrances.

Concerns have grown that there may be moves to deploy police to the site to secure ballot boxes, following reports on the 9th that the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Deputy Commissioner for Public Security would be in charge of on-site control of the counting station after the Seocho Police Chief suddenly resigned a few months before his retirement.

Citizens demand that the ballot boxes at this counting station are crucial evidence of electoral fraud and request their preservation as evidence, but the court has dismissed requests for the preservation of ballot boxes and ballots.

The Seoul Eastern District Court's Civil Division 51 (Presiding Judge Kim Ji-yeon) dismissed the request for evidence preservation concerning the original ballots used by actual voters at the second polling station in Jamsil 7-dong, Songpa-gu, and the physical ballot boxes transferred and stored at the Seoul Olympic Park Handball Stadium (counting station).

However, the court issued a preservation order only for records related to the number of ballots, such as the "1,900 copies printed" of remaining ballots from the second polling station in Jamsil 7-dong, CCTV footage (from June 3, 8:00 AM to June 5, 9:00 PM), and election commission documents related to ballot counts.

By NNP Representative Reporter Sung Ku Hong in the US / Special Report by this newspaper NNP info@newsandpost.com