Kakao Ranks 7th Worldwide in 'Digital Corporate Human Rights Protection Index'

Kakao Co-CEOs Jo Soo-yong (left) and Yeo Min-soo

[Asia Economy Reporter Buaeri] Kakao ranked 7th worldwide in the evaluation of human rights protection levels by digital companies.

According to Kakao on the 9th, it ranked 7th among 14 digital platform companies in the 2020 RDR (Ranking Digital Rights) announced by the US non-profit think tank 'New America Open Technology Institute.'

RDR is an index that evaluates the level of human rights protection by digital companies. Global operators such as Google and Facebook were included, and among Korean companies, only Kakao and Samsung (12th) were listed.

Kakao was evaluated as transparently disclosing policies affecting digital rights in terms of freedom of expression, government requests for content sanctions, and procedures for private content sanction requests compared to other digital platform companies.

Kakao was surveyed as the digital platform company that most transparently discloses content and account sanction statuses, following Twitter.

In addition, the institute evaluated that Kakao clearly and predictably presents procedures for receiving and remedying user complaints related to freedom of expression and privacy.

The score Kakao obtained in this category was 41%. Google and Apple scored 21% and 20%, respectively, while Facebook scored 10%.

According to the survey, only four digital platform companies, including Kakao, explicitly declared that they would consider 'human rights issues' when developing and utilizing algorithms. The other three were Google, Microsoft (MS), and Samsung Electronics.

Kakao stated, "We were the first in Korea to start considering algorithm ethics and announced the Kakao Algorithm Ethics Charter in 2018," adding, "Based on this, we are gradually strengthening external explanations about algorithms."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.