Amid growing criticism from rights activists, the government has softened its stance and announced that internet content generated by press institutions is not among the information that should be deleted under the controversial right to be forgotten provision guaranteed by the revised Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law.

The Communications and Information Ministry said that both the government and the House of Representatives, when deliberating the law in October, had agreed that the right to be forgotten, as stipulated under Article 26 of the ITE law, could only order the ministry to delete non-press information on the internet at the request of a plaintiff.

Immediately after the bill was passed into law in October, rights activists feared that the new provision in the draconian law, which has seen the jailing of dozens of internet users, would give the gree...