Vice President Woo Yeong-gyu of Kakao said at the National Assembly's Science. ICT. Broadcasting. and Communications Committee audit on the 14th that a KakaoTalk update "rollback" (restoring a service to its original state), which has sparked controversy, is technically impossible.
Woo said "it is technically impossible" in response to a question from Hwang Jeong-a, a lawmaker of the Democratic Party of Korea, asking whether the update could be rolled back in consideration of KakaoTalk users' inconvenience. He said, "The concept of rollback is not going back to 1.0 when the application version is 2.0, but going back from 2.1 to 2.0," adding, "It is difficult to return completely to a previous version."
Woo said, "Users who did not receive the update can use (the previous version)," but added, "There may be issues in terms of after-sales service." He went on, "We are well aware of users' inconveniences and are looking closely," adding, "We will make improvements soon." In response to criticism that they are not rolling back because of advertising revenue, he drew a line, saying, "That is not true."
Kakao plans to restore the first screen of the Friends tab to the previous "Friends list" during the fourth quarter this year, and improve the current feed-style posts so they can be selected in a separate "News" menu.
Woo also said, regarding concerns that short-form (short video) content could be indiscriminately exposed to minors, "We follow the Personal Information Protection Commission's guidelines that prohibit collecting behavioral information for personalized ads for minors under 14."