LINE

LINE Content Moderation Report

English
日本語
Jul-Dec 2019
Jan-Jun 2022 Jul-Dec 2021 Jan-Jun 2021 Jul-Dec 2020 Jan-Jun 2020 Jan-Jun 2019

In order to provide a safe and secure experience on our services, LINE suspends content that violates our terms of service agreements and relevant laws. This report details the results of content moderation over a given period of time.

1. Actions Taken against Violating Posts on LINE Services

LINE employs a two-step process to monitor posts on Timeline(LINE VOOM), LINE LIVE, LINE Manga and other LINE services. User-posted content is checked first by (1) an automatic monitoring system and then afterwards as needed by (2) our monitoring team. This two-step process helps ensure that any post that violates our terms of service agreements or relevant laws do not spread on LINE's various community platforms.

First, user-posted content on supported LINE services is checked by the automatic monitoring system to ensure that it does not contain any prohibited language, break any service rules, or violate the terms of service or relevant laws. If objectionable content is found by the monitoring system, it is immediately suspended after being posted.

Next, a monitoring team checks any content the monitoring system cannot classify. The monitoring team compares the content against a set of evaluation criteria and previous examples to make a decision on whether or not the content is safe. If the monitoring team determines the posted content is in violation of the terms of service or relevant laws, it is suspended.

Please refer to the chart below for more information on suspended content by the monitoring team in the last six months.

(1) Content Suspended by Automatic Check 10,009,824 items
(2) Content Suspended by Manual Check 9,517,033 items
Total 19,526,857 items

The breakdown of types of suspended content by manual check is as follows:

Promotion of illegal activity27%
Obscene content24%
Spam21%
Unpermitted commercial use of accounts10%
Socilication6%
Disturbing and problematic content5%
Others7%

LINE suspended 19,526,857 content between July to December 2019. This is an increase of about 8.5%, compared to 17,992,632 suspended content in the previous term. Although Timeline spams decreased (16.8 million → 13.2 million), 5.4 million content were suspended on OpenChat, which began services in August 2019. This led to an overall increase in the number of suspended content. Content relating to illegal online casinos (advertisements, URLs, etc.) in Thailand account for a large percentage of the suspended content.

Covered services by this report

  • The following services provided by LINE Corporation (in all available countries)
    • LINE Timeline(LINE VOOM)
    • Smart Channel
    • LINE Official Account
    • LINE LIVE
    • LINE Manga
    • LINE Fortune
    • LINE Pasha
    • LINE Step
    • LINE BLOG
    • LINE Delima
    • LINE Shopping
    • LINE Healthcare
    • LINE Novel
    • OpenChat
    • LINE Ask Me
    • WizBall

LINE is unable to monitor any message a user sends/receives on a regular LINE chat room unless the user sends unencrypted chat data to LINE by using the reporting tool. How LINE responded to the reported messages is not in the scope of this report.

Other notes

  • Spam: Using tools to send stickers or messages repetitively in a short period of time, advertising adults-only websites, promoting registration for dating apps, etc.
  • Obscene content: Child pornography, videos of sexual content and genitalia, etc.
  • Solicitation: Inappropriate requests for dating or meeting, etc.
  • Unpermitted commercial use of accounts: Advertisement of counterfeit brand websites, sales of inappropriate products, etc.
  • Disturbing and problematic content: Excessively hateful remarks, photos of dead bodies, click fraud, links to phishing sites, etc.
  • Promotion of illegal activity: Announcements of attacks or bombings, sale of illegal drugs, selling online data (such as accounts, coins, and avatars) for real money, etc.
  • Other:
    • Case 1: Publishing personal information, such as LINE ID or phone number
    • Case 2: Running a promotion to induce friend requests or transfer of personal information (Example: I'm giving out free stickers! If you want some, just leave your LINE ID in the comments section.)
    • Case 3: Impersonating an official announcement (Example: This is the LINE Operations Team. We've detected several issues with our system today. We are giving out 500 LINE Points to every user to apologize for this inconvenience.)
    • Case 4: Unique situations for specific services (Examples: posting spoilers on LINE Manga, making threats or stalking people on LINE BLOG)

LINE will continue working hard to provide safe and secure services with the most transparent operations possible.

©LINE Corporation