Removal of Negative Company Reviews on Lighthouse (Formerly Known as 'Company Reputation')

Our firm has successfully handled a provisional disposition case involving the removal of approximately 20 reviews on Lighthouse (formerly known as Kaisha no Hyouban), which criticized the poor working conditions of companies.

Lighthouse (formerly known as Kaisha no Hyouban) is a job and career change review site operated by En-Japan Inc. Currently, the major players in this field are:

• Lighthouse (formerly known as Kaisha no Hyouban)
• Job Change Conference
• OpenWork (formerly known as Vokers)

Among these, Lighthouse (formerly known as Kaisha no Hyouban) is one of the top three. Due to its strong SEO, the Lighthouse page of a company may appear on the first page of Google search results when searched by the company name. If the rating on Lighthouse is, for example, around 2 stars, and the reviews label the company as a “black company” (a term used in Japan to describe companies with poor working conditions), it can have a significant negative impact on the company’s recruitment efforts.

How to Remove Reviews Posted on Lighthouse (formerly known as Kaisha no Hyouban)

As is the case with any site, when seeking to remove negative reviews posted on Lighthouse (formerly known as Kaisha no Hyouban), there are two methods:

• Requesting removal out of court without involving the court
• Requesting removal through the court using a procedure called a provisional disposition

These are the two existing methods.

https://monolith.law/reputation/provisional-disposition[ja]

Of course, the former method that does not involve the court is simpler, and should be used as much as possible. However, Lighthouse (formerly known as Kaisha no Hyouban) tends to have the following personalityistics:

• Lighthouse (formerly known as Kaisha no Hyouban) is a site where requests for removal in out-of-court negotiations, simply stating “This is an illegal post, please remove it” without attaching any evidence, are often rejected.
• Therefore, even when requesting removal out of court, it is necessary to prepare evidence that the post is illegal (such as employment rules and time cards, as mentioned later), and the effort required in the preparation stage is not much different whether it is out-of-court negotiation or provisional disposition.
• Furthermore, in the case of removal by out-of-court negotiation, in practice, it is difficult to request the removal of a large number of reviews at the same time, and it is often necessary to negotiate in a manner such as one by one, or a few at a time.

The merits of out-of-court negotiation compared to provisional disposition, in general terms not limited to Lighthouse (formerly known as Kaisha no Hyouban), are:

1. Many cases are responsive even if negotiations are conducted without attaching detailed evidence
2. The required period until removal is short
3. As a result of the above two points, the cost is also low

However, in the case of Lighthouse (formerly known as Kaisha no Hyouban),

1. Detailed evidence is required even for out-of-court negotiations
2. While the period required for a provisional disposition is at most 2-3 months, if removal is carried out little by little, it will end up taking about the same amount of time
3. As a result, the cost does not change much

These are the tendencies. Regarding the third point, in this case, our firm was able to remove the defamatory review posts at a cost of just over 30,000 yen per response, but it is believed that the cost did not change much even with out-of-court negotiations (※However, this is a price considering various circumstances unique to this case, and we cannot guarantee that we can realize removal at the same price in the future).

Defamatory Reviews Posted on Lighthouse (formerly Kaisha no Hyouban)

In this case, approximately 20 defamatory reviews were posted, generally containing the following allegations:

• Long overtime hours, some of which are unpaid
• Overtime pay is below the legal minimum wage
• There are instances of being ordered to work early in the morning without compensation
• Unable to take paid leave
• No incentive rewards for sales positions, regardless of sales performance
• Forced to work on holidays
• Unable to get promoted for a certain period after joining the company
• No women are hired in certain departments
• No training system in place

In a sense, many of these posts can be considered typical defamatory reviews posted on Lighthouse (formerly Kaisha no Hyouban).

The main argument for requesting the removal of such posts, whether through out-of-court negotiations or provisional dispositions, is the claim of defamation (infringement of the right to honor). Defamation, in simple terms, is established when:

1. The facts stated are specific
2. They have a negative connotation for the company
3. The stated facts are false

It is established in such cases.

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

To add to this,

1. For example, if it is simply written that “it is a bad company”, the content is not specific, and it is merely a personal opinion (whether it is appropriate to write opinions on review sites is another matter), making it difficult to claim defamation.
2. Occasionally, there are descriptions about the business owner, such as “driving a luxury car”. While such descriptions may be problematic for reasons other than defamation, such as the owner’s privacy, it is difficult to claim that they are negative or illegal in relation to defamation. All the descriptions in this case satisfy this condition as they allege that the company is violating labor laws.
3. This requirement is the issue. To claim that the description is false, for example, in the case of overtime pay, it is common to submit evidence such as employment rules based on legal provisions regarding overtime pay, working hours read from randomly selected employee time cards, and pay slips showing corresponding overtime pay, to prove that overtime pay is being paid in accordance with the law, and to claim that the description is false.

That’s how it is.

How Specific Should Reviews Criticizing ‘Black Companies’ Be?

However, the relationship between the actual content of reviews and the above points can be more complex. For example, in this case, the following statement was made (with minor modifications):

Working hours, duty hours, overtime: They are long. Overtime applications start from 9 p.m., but allowances are only given after 10 p.m.

Reading this statement normally, one could interpret it as:

• For example, between regular hours such as 5 p.m. or 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., one cannot even apply for overtime
• Even if one does apply, overtime pay is only given after 10 p.m.

In documents for out-of-court negotiations for deletion, or in petitions for provisional measures (documents that serve the same function as a complaint in a lawsuit), this would be described as follows:

The post in question includes a statement about “working hours, duty hours, overtime,” and the topic of overtime is brought up immediately before the statement “overtime applications start from 9 p.m.” Therefore, it is in line with the normal attention and reading of a general reader to interpret “allowances” as “overtime allowances”.
Furthermore, the usual end of business hours for a company is generally around 5 p.m., or at the latest 7 p.m. Therefore, the statement “overtime applications start from 9 p.m., but allowances are only given after 10 p.m.” indicates that overtime allowances are paid after 10 p.m., which is after the end of business hours, and that work performed during the time before that, despite being overtime work, is not compensated with overtime allowances.

In other words,

• The specific content of the statement may not always be clear (What does “allowances” mean? Does “10 o’clock” refer to a.m. or p.m.?)
• It is necessary to convincingly argue how to interpret it naturally, including the context before and after the statement

That is the point.

Similar issues include, for example, whether a statement simply stating “it’s a black company” without mentioning overtime hours, etc., constitutes defamation.

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

There were no such posts in this case, but our firm has had cases where we have successfully argued for the deletion of such statements on the grounds that they are “illegal”.

https://monolith.law/reputation/illegal-posting-black-companies-in5ch[ja]

What Evidence is Required?

The collection of evidence to prove that a review is false depends on the content of the review and the actual situation within the company in question. This is precisely the situation where the expertise of a lawyer, a specialist in law, is required. In this case, the following evidence was submitted in response to the review:

• Employment rules and wage regulations stipulating that overtime pay is to be paid for overtime work
• Employment rules adopting a deemed working hours system for overtime work during business trips or work outside the business premises (adopted because it is difficult for the company to manage due to the nature of the company’s business, which involves a lot of work outside the office, and the time for meals and breaks is left to individual discretion)

As mentioned above,

Regarding the issue of overtime pay, generally, evidence such as employment rules that have legal provisions regarding overtime pay, working hours read from randomly selected employees’ time cards, and pay slips showing the payment of corresponding overtime pay are submitted to prove the fact that overtime pay is being paid in accordance with the law, and it is often argued that the description is false.

It is also possible that the evidence to be submitted differs between “general companies” and “the company in question”.

Defining “Falsehood” in Defamatory Online Reviews Can Be Challenging

Furthermore, there are online reviews that are not clearly defined as “false,” even though they clearly damage the image of the company in question. In this case, the following post was problematic:

“There are no incentive rewards for sales positions, no matter how much you sell, you don’t get a reward that reflects your performance.”

This post became an issue because the company in question did not have a system in place to provide incentive rewards, such as a certain percentage of sales, to sales positions.

However, even if there was no incentive reward system, it is hard to imagine that the company should naturally tolerate the above-mentioned online review. The above-mentioned online review is clearly negative for the company in question, has a negative impact on job changes in sales positions, and for companies that conduct fair personnel evaluations and set rewards, the above-mentioned online review should be claimed to be “false”.

Therefore, in this case, we made the following argument:

The statement implies that there is no reward reflecting performance, and that no matter how hard you work, it is not reflected in personnel evaluations.
The fact is that the company does not reward employees for their achievements and does not conduct personnel evaluations that reflect performance. The implication of this fact gives viewers the impression that the company is a workplace with no job satisfaction, reducing the number of job seekers and significantly lowering the social evaluation of the creditor.
The company regularly honors excellent employees and provides monetary rewards, and also conducts personnel evaluations using detailed objective criteria. Therefore, the statement contradicts the truth.

In other words,

1. What kind of meaning can be read in the statement in the first place
2. Why is that meaning negative for the company
3. What kind of things/evidence can be used to call the meaning “false”

These points need to be examined. And as evidence for “falsehood”,

• Company newsletters that convey the system and actual facts of commendation
• Examples of evaluation forms
• Examples of pay raises based on them

Such things will be submitted.

Summary

As such, removing negative reviews on Lighthouse (formerly known as ‘Company Reputation’) can be legally challenging in terms of:

• How to construct your argument
• What kind of evidence to prepare

However, law firms specializing in reputational risk management have expertise in these areas. With such expertise, these law firms can potentially remove problematic posts by tailoring arguments and gathering evidence to the specific circumstances of each company and the negative reviews in question.

Negative reviews on Lighthouse (formerly known as ‘Company Reputation’) can have a significant negative impact on companies, particularly in terms of recruitment. If you are considering removing such reviews, it would be advisable to consult with a law firm that has expertise in reputational risk management.