Criticism is mounting that Starbucks nickname callout service is failing to filter political hate speech. As some users adopt nicknames that disparage politicians or mock the deceased, frontline workers are being repeatedly exposed to such expressions.

Following the recent Tank Day marketing controversy, posts have spread on online communities using nicknames that disparage the late former President Roh Moo-hyun and President Lee Jae Myung. Photos of store order boards display political taunts and hate terms such as ‘Noh Muhyeon’, ‘Taenggeul Muhyeon’, and ‘First Lady Unification’. The photo is said to have been taken last August at a Starbucks in Gwanghwamun.

Starbucks ‘Call My Name’ is a service in which an employee hands over a drink while directly calling the nickname a customer has registered in the application. The Starbucks app advises that violations of public decency, as well as profanity, hate, or defamatory expressions, and expressions that are hard to pronounce or awkward to call, are grounds for restricting nickname use.

However, on the 27th, when this reporter entered politician names and related expressions as nicknames in the Starbucks app, they were confirmed to be registrable without particular restriction. During the presidential election last year, Starbucks temporarily banned use of the names of the seven candidates as nicknames, but that restriction has now been lifted.

Starbucks stated, “We monitor newly registered nicknames and, if they do not comply with the rules, filter them afterward,” and added, “If a phrase is difficult for a partner to call, they can call the order number instead of the nickname.” However, people on the ground say they often have no choice but to read problematic nicknames as they are. One Starbucks partner said, “If we refuse to say a nickname that is obviously strange, the customer complains about why it was not called, so we often just say it quickly and move on,” and added, “It feels like they enjoy making us unable to say it, which is even more unpleasant.”

Starbucks previously restricted terms related to labor and sexual minorities as banned words, drawing controversy. According to a 2022 report by the Kyunghyang Shinmun, the Starbucks app at the time would not register words such as ‘raise the minimum wage’, ‘abolish irregular employment’, ‘Starbucks union’, ‘lesbian’, and ‘gay’, labeling them as ‘nicknames that cannot be used’. Now, political hate expressions appear with little sanction, prompting criticism that Starbucks is selectively filtering only certain expressions.

There are also claims that a system requiring customer-service workers to repeatedly encounter or directly call problematic expressions infringes on human rights. Choi Kang-yeon of the Labor Attorneys for the Realization of Labor Human Rights (NoNoMu) said, “Far-right nicknames displayed on in-store systems are clear visual and emotional violence against frontline workers,” and added, “Leaving hate speech unattended despite having the technology to block it amounts to willful neglect of the legal duty under the Occupational Safety and Health Act to protect customer-service workers.”

The current Occupational Safety and Health Act requires employers to take necessary preventive measures to protect customer-service workers from customer verbal abuse or assault and from acts that cause mental distress.

Choi urged that “the government should not leave this solely to Starbucks voluntary improvement, but should begin supervision.” Choi also stated that administrative guidance and the establishment of guidelines across the service industry are needed regarding the problem of exposure to hate speech through platforms and applications.