Is Posting About 'Black Companies' on 5chan (Formerly 2chan) Considered Defamation?

Our firm has obtained a court ruling stating that posts on 5ch (formerly 2ch), accusing companies of being “black” or exploitative, are illegal.

Whether or not defamation of a company as a “black company” is illegal, and whether it is possible to identify the poster through deletion, IP disclosure, or disclosure of name and address, has been a topic of debate. For example,

This company is a black company because it has an average of over 100 hours of unpaid overtime per month.

If you write clear and specific facts like this, and if there is a falsehood in that “specific” fact, in this case, “the company has an average of over 100 hours of unpaid overtime per month,” then that post is illegal. This is probably not a controversial issue.

However, for posts that make somewhat abstract statements like “This company is black,”

• It is not illegal because it is close to a personal opinion
• If you do not write specific details such as overtime hours, it is not defamation but an issue of insult, which is somewhat acceptable in social norms

There were such views.

However, even if the statement is “black,” it is a ruling that it can be defamation (at least in certain cases). Below, I will explain the details.

Conditions for Defamation to be Established

Firstly, defamation, in simple terms, is established when all of the following conditions are met:

1. Specific facts are stated (indicated)
2. These facts cause disadvantage to the plaintiff (individual or company) (i.e., their social reputation is diminished)
3. The facts are false (and there is no reasonable reason to believe they are true)

Details about the requirements for defamation to be established are explained in the article below.

https://monolith.law/reputation/defamation[ja]

Is Posting “Black Company” About a Company Defamation?

When it comes to posts labeling a company as “black”, the main issue is the first one. As we have already explained,

• “Black” is not specific, so at most it’s a matter of insult (but to prevent any slight insult from always being illegal, a certain level of criticism is socially accepted)
• “Black” is a matter of personal opinion, and cases where it becomes illegal are almost nonexistent

There were also views like these. We have detailed explanations about these in a separate article.

https://monolith.law/reputation/black-companies-dafamation[ja]

Overview of the Case Related to 5channel (formerly 2channel)

This case involves a company that had a post written about it on a 5channel (formerly 2channel) thread, stating “the inside is also black”.

Defamation cases on 5channel (formerly 2channel) generally proceed in the following manner:

1. First, a request for deletion and IP address disclosure is made through out-of-court negotiations or provisional dispositions.
2. If the IP address is disclosed, a lawsuit is filed to request the disclosure of the poster’s name and address.

The judgment in this case is a two-step process.

We have detailed explanations about this flow in separate articles.

https://monolith.law/reputation/deletionrequest-for-2chand5ch[ja]

https://monolith.law/reputation/disclosure-of-the-senders-information[ja]

A “judgment” is something that is made in a formal court proceeding, based on strict legal judgment.

“Even the Inside is Black” Constitutes Defamation

In this case, the court made the following judgment.

Looking at the thread in question, it is clear that there are posts discussing the plaintiff’s internal environment and others mixed in leading up to the post in question (omitted). Therefore, when reading the post in question, which was made after the aforementioned posts, based on the ordinary attention and reading of a general reader, it is natural to interpret the “inside” mentioned in the post as referring to the plaintiff’s internal environment (omitted), and the post can be recognized as indicating the fact that the plaintiff’s working environment is poor, a so-called black company (omitted).
(omitted)
On this point, the defendant (omitted) argues that “black” is polysemous and does not lower social evaluation. However, as mentioned above, considering that the post in question is made after posts discussing the plaintiff’s working environment, it is reasonable to interpret it as referring to a so-called black company, and the defendant’s argument cannot be accepted.

Tokyo District Court, July 18, 2019 (Reiwa 1) Judgment

The thread in question is about the plaintiff, a company, and the problematic post “Even the Inside is Black” was response number 62. And among the posts leading up to it were

• Response number 5, which stated that it was impossible in response to a post praising the boss
• Response number 11, which suggested that it would be better not to join the company

In other words,

• There were no “specific” posts to the level of “overtime work exceeds an average of 100 hours per month”
• It’s not necessarily about the immediate response, but about another post within the same thread

However, the court ruled that even so,

1. It was a thread about the plaintiff
2. It was a thread where posts discussing the working environment were mixed in
3. Therefore, the phrase “Even the Inside is Black” would normally be read as meaning that the plaintiff is a black company
4. And that (if there is evidence that the plaintiff’s working environment is not poor and it is not true) constitutes defamation

That’s the judgment that was made.

It is believed that the same applies to 2channel (2ch.sc) and copy sites

This judgment ultimately determines that:

1. Within the bulletin board thread, there were responses about the working environment,
2. When the term “black” is used in this context, it refers to a “black company” (a company with poor working conditions), and
3. As mentioned above, this constitutes defamation.

Not only on 5channel (formerly 2channel), but also on 2channel (2ch.sc), its copy sites, summary sites, Bakusai, jpnumber, telnavi, and other bulletin board sites where threads (pages) discussing specific companies are created, it can be said that there is a high possibility of the same judgment being made.

https://monolith.law/reputation/delation-of-scraping-site-roundup-website[ja]

Summary

When a company is referred to as “black,” it is naturally interpreted as being a “black company,” and it is assumed that the person making the post understands this and has written it with this understanding in mind. For a company, being labeled as “black” is unbearable and can have negative effects on aspects such as recruitment.

In this sense, while the judgment can be seen as “expected” to some extent, it can be said that the judgment was made that defamation against a company by labeling it as “black” is illegal, even under the conditions mentioned above.