KakaoTalk

Following criticism of the South Korean government's response to the Sewol Ferry Disaster, Korean authorities announced a "zero-tolerance policy" which involved investigation and detention of individuals deemed to be spreading libel through Internet media.[8] Some KakaoTalk users have received notices that their messaging accounts were searched by South Korean authorities.

Until early-2022, when the South Korean government relaxed COVID-19 laws, KakaoTalk effectively functioned as one of South Korea's digital vaccine passport platforms (along with several other platforms). It was used as a storage for mandatory COVID vaccine data, and individuals entering public venues were required to have their vaccination information scanned via QR codes by the venue.

Since the identity of individuals at a venue were available as contact tracing data, KakaoTalk also served as a tool for contract tracing by the Korean government until its vaccine passport functionality was discontinued.

Kakao has taken steps to make KakaoTalk a safer platform. In December 2020, KakaoTalk introduced Safebot, an AI-based comment-filtering function. The function automatically filters comments that violate KakaoTalk’s operational policies such as profanity. Profanity is covered with musical notes, and comments that may be offensive are marked with a warning. According to a press release published by Kakao on December 14, 2022, the quality of KakaoTalk comment culture has improved since the introduction of Safebot. From the second half of 2020 before the introduction of Safebot to 2022, comments containing profanity were reduced by one-third. In the same time period, the proportion of abusive comments reported by users among all comments decreased from 4.2% to 2.4%.[9]

After a fire in its Seoul data center on 15 October 2022, KakaoTalk services were disrupted globally, its "worst-ever malfunction".[10] President Yoon called for a quick resumption of services, which over 90% of Koreans use on a frequent basis.[11] Services were partially restored within about 10 hours, but it took four days to repair servers and finally normalise operations.[12] Messaging, as well as payments, banking, ride-hailing, maps, and games were disrupted.[13] Kakao's co-CEO, Nam-koong Whon, resigned on 17 October 2022 because of the situation.[14]

A solitary chat room is a kind of open chat room, where many anonymous people gather to talk about specific topics, communicating only with images, without using text or emoticons. In other words, it is making a story out of images only. Similar chat rooms have sprung up as an open chat room that exchanges food pictures without a word became popular. As the popularity of the celebrity themed "solitary chat rooms" grew, celebrities went into the chat room themselves.[16]

KakaoTalk is available in 15 languages and used in over 130 countries.[17]

On July 26, 2011, Kakao Corp. established Japanese Corp., Kakao Japan and appointed Cha-Jin Park as a representative. According to company officials, the app appears to be very actively used in Japan.[18] When a massive earthquake hit Japan on March 11, 2011, KakaoTalk's messaging traffic in Japan surged as millions of people sought to confirm the safety of friends and family. KakaoTalk played an important role as a data network-based communication method; it successfully replaced disabled wired and wireless networks and helped connect the disaster-stricken.[19]

KakaoTalk has targeted countries in Southeast Asia where no dominant mobile messenger service stands. KakaoTalk is forming strategic partnerships in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, as well.[20] In 2013, KakaoTalk began airing TV commercials in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam featuring Big Bang. In the ads, local celebrities and BigBang appear together to promote KakaoTalk.[21] In late 2013, Indonesia became the country with the second-most users of KakaoTalk, after South Korea, with 13 million users and the potential to become KakaoTalk's largest market worldwide. The former co-CEO of KakaoTalk, Sirgoo Lee, stated "We grew our user base by more than 25 times in one year, so hopefully, we will continue at that rate." KakaoTalk has tailored their service to the local environment by collaborating with local designers and companies to generate "Indonesian-specific content".[22]

In February 2014, KakaoTalk launched for Nokia Asha 500, 501, 502, and 503 devices, expanding its reach to users of a wider audience.[23]