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The story
LAPONE, the agency behind idol group me:I, filed a request to disclose the identity of someone who posted defamatory content about the group online — and it’s become a hot topic on Hello! Project fan message boards.
Fans have been flooding the thread with calls for UP-FRONT, which manages Hello! Project, to take the same action. The discussion also touched on specific accounts seen as the worst offenders for slander, and on how much compensation such a disclosure request could realistically bring in.
What people said
Haven't seen many complaint accounts around lately, have you?
If they come off that creepy just from their posts online, they must be way worse in real life…
He's behind like 90% of the slander against Hello! Project members.
If you're gonna drop nasty borderline put-downs, just stay holed up on 5ch.
That'd be fine, but there are idiots who play self-appointed pundit — dragging stuff that would've stayed buried on the Wolf board out into the open on X just to make a big public statement about their feelings.
Already contacted UP-FRONT!
Expect a response any minute now!
Supposedly it covers anonymous accounts too.
Defamation can go up to 3 million yen, but realistically it'll land around 300,000.
Never seen that.
That's all in your head.
There are plenty of accounts — basically walking bundles of approval-seeking — who 'worry' about the slander on the Wolf board while unwittingly helping spread it further by bringing it up on X lol
Same way a tattletale gets frozen out by everyone.
What are you talking about, everyone does this nowadays.
Background and Key Points
LAPONE is the talent agency (a joint venture between Yoshimoto Kogyo and Korea’s JYP Entertainment) that produced me:I through the 2022–23 survival show “Produce 101 Japan The Girls.” Hello! Project, by contrast, is UP-FRONT’s much older idol franchise, built around Morning Musume since 1997 and encompassing over a dozen groups across nearly three decades — long enough to have accumulated a correspondingly deep well of message-board rumor and member-related scandal. Disclosure requests (発信者情報開示請求) compel a platform or ISP to hand over an anonymous poster’s identifying information so the target can pursue defamation damages; a 2022 revision to Japan’s Provider Liability Limitation Act streamlined this into a single non-litigious court procedure, which is part of why agencies have gotten faster and more willing to file them.
The thread didn’t converge on “UP-FRONT should sue” so much as split over whether Hello! Project’s slander problem is even what it appears to be — several posters (43, 46, 68) argued the loudest “concerned” accounts and even some slander itself originate from within the fandom or agency-adjacent circles, not outside antagonists, which undercuts the idea that disclosure requests would target a clean enemy.
What’s likely to be missed: a disclosure request doesn’t equal a payout or a public shaming. Post 42’s estimate — a realistic settlement around ¥300,000 rather than the ¥3 million statutory ceiling — is closer to the norm, and legal fees can erode much of that, meaning these filings are often as much a deterrent signal as a moneymaker.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project) thread “LAPONE, me:I’s agency, filed a disclosure request against a defamer, so I want UP-FRONT to do it too.”
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