[The Editors' Verdict] Is Kakao the Only One to Blame?

This Society Nurtured a Giant by Entrusting Personal Data and Public Duties
Beyond Corporate Accountability,
A Moment to Reflect on Human Dignity

Kakao, which monopolized the market, was negligent in establishing even the minimum safety measures. Is this the core of the KakaoTalk outage incident? Seeing Chairman Kim Beom-su of Kakao being summoned as a witness for the National Assembly audit and the rapid progress of regulatory measures on platform companies, it seems difficult to doubt such a perspective as it pervades the atmosphere.

Why did the fire occur at the SK C&C data center, and who is responsible? Why did the data backup, redundancy, and disaster recovery systems fail to operate? Examining these matters will be important in determining the accountability for the incident. However, reflection on this incident cannot stop there.

We cannot blame a company that developed a good service that is easy to use, versatile, and used by everyone around us. Kakao did what was natural as a private company, and the fact that it ultimately came to dominate the market only proves that it did its job very well. We cannot question Kakao about why it became a market-dominant business operator. It was we ourselves who nurtured Kakao into a monopoly business. Not only individuals but even the government stepped in.

We and the government handed over vaccination records and movement information to platform companies. They took charge not only of quarantine but also of tax and public security functions. If foreigners who do not know what kind of companies Kakao or Naver are were to see this, they might think these two companies are some kind of state-owned enterprises. Were the preemptive measures that the government should have taken before specific companies or services came to dominate citizens’ lives or control social safety properly implemented? The government, which granted Kakao state-level power, now talking about security threats is therefore somewhat self-contradictory.

We easily shifted all personal information and various public duties that the state should have invested in and managed itself to private companies and enjoyed the convenience. However, we cannot blindly force private companies to bear social responsibilities commensurate with their status. That is desirable but not obligatory. The government and citizens can intervene only when a company abuses the status granted by society to cause market distortion. In this regard, limiting the KakaoTalk incident solely to a monopoly issue risks overlooking the important lessons this event offers.

We have ignored many warnings that platform companies would come to dominate humanity. Perhaps because the domination of humans by machines is a future matter, while the convenience of KakaoTalk is a present reality. Their algorithms can control which political party we support, what food we eat, and where we move. Even if these private operators maliciously alter algorithms for their own benefit, we will continue to live unaware of this fact. We cannot understand the complex inner workings of smartphones or the structure of algorithms, and without even trying to know, we are now clamoring for the rapid restoration of the KakaoTalk system that suddenly stopped, blaming it.

All we know is that a fire broke out underground in some company, and the messenger that connected me, my family, friends, and colleagues stopped working. Communication was cut off, livelihoods were disrupted, and we realized our helplessness and complacency in having no alternative prepared to replace KakaoTalk. This is a matter of dignity beyond monopoly. Could this incident become an opportunity to reset the relationship between means and ends? Could it be the beginning of a grand effort to return platform services to their original role as tools serving humanity?