Message from Chief Director

Advances in information technology (IT) have brought various benefits to our society. The Internet penetration rate has expanded from 6 percent in 2000 to more than 70 percent of the human population. The Internet, social media and other technologies have greatly benefited society.

On the other hand, new challenges have arisen, such as the spread of disinformation and misinformation (so-called fake news) as well as slander. The loss of credibility in news and other negative aspects have also become prominent and grown into a serious social issue. In the field of digital advertising, too, the rise of the “attention economy,” which is excessively aimed at attracting attention, has distorted the health of the market.

Challenges created by technologies need to be solved by technologies. By working with people who think more needs to be done about the relationship between content, such as news, and advertising, it is necessary to develop technologies that benefit stakeholders, including readers, the media and the advertising industry, and spread technological standards.

Toward this end, we have proposed a new technology called “Originator Profile” (OP). It discloses information on content creators using digitized codes. By making it possible to identify the originators of information, the technology is expected to establish a system that enables readers, or in other words, end users, to easily recognize media organizations and content that have been authenticated by a third party and deter a flood of disinformation, misinformation and ad fraud.

The OP technology itself does not screen media organizations or advertisers. It is a technology that certification bodies and other parties use to make the Internet healthier and more transparent.

We established the Originator Profile Collaborative Innovation Partnership (OP CIP) in December 2022 to put the OP technology into practical use. Under the OP CIP, we are conducting demonstration experiments mainly with domestic companies with an aim of global dissemination of the technology.

The situation about disinformation, misinformation and ad fraud is rapidly becoming more serious, and concerns are growing that they will pose a threat to democracy and jeopardize the security of society. We believe that it is our responsibility for the future to deal with the situation in cooperation with various stakeholders.

The Internet is one space across the globe. Expectations are very high for Japan, a country that values trust and ethics and has a high-quality culture. Japan will take the lead in proposing specifications to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a standardization organization for Web technologies, and actively work toward international standardization.

We aim to contribute to the healthy development of the Internet that people across the globe can use with peace of mind by reaching out to the Web content industry, the online advertising industry, browser vendors and others around the world.

Please look forward to our efforts at the OP CIP.