KakaoTalk adds ‘delete sent message’ feature, but deletion record stays

Kakao, the operator of South Korea’s most popular mobile messenger KakaoTalk, has officially adopted a new feature that lets users delete sent messages within five minutes of their delivery. The update has been applied as of Tuesday.

However, once a user deletes a message, the phrase “this message has been deleted” appears in place of the removed message on both the sender’s and receiver’s chatroom, leaving a conspicuous record of the deletion.

To delete a message, users can long-press a given message, click delete and select the “delete from both chatroom” option. Any message, including text, photos, videos and emoticons, can be deleted.

The new feature comes in response to widespread demand from Koreans, the majority of whom use KakaoTalk.

Until now, Kakao resisted pressure to offer this function, arguing that exchanges on KakaoTalk were akin to real-life conversations that could not be taken back.

Other global mobile messenger systems, including Naver-owned Line, Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Telegram, already offer an “unsend sent message” function. 

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)