Photo/Illutration Police officers search a neighborhood in Yokohama’s Aoba Ward on Oct. 16 after an elderly resident was killed in a robbery. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

The government has established emergency countermeasures to prevent recruitment of workers for “yami baito” (dark part-time jobs) on social media, a practice used in a string of violent robberies in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

The plans were compiled at a meeting of relevant Cabinet ministers on Dec. 17.

“There have been some very tragic cases in which victims have died, and this is unforgivable,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who attended the meeting, said. “Each countermeasure must be conducted with a sense of urgency.”

In yami baito cases, people are hired through recruitment postings on social media platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), and other websites. The posts advertise high rewards with phrases such as “white jobs,” meaning workers will not be exploited, and “instant cash.”

In many cases, the work turns out to be criminal activity, but the recruits feel too intimidated to refuse orders from the recruiter, police have said.

The government will define problematic recruitment postings and instruct operators of social media platforms to delete them.

Recruitment posts that do not show the name of the employer, contact information or job description are in violation of the Employment Security Law.

Although social media operators are not obligated to delete such postings by law, the companies have their own terms of use that ban posting illegal information.

The government intends to encourage them to delete problematic content by clearly stating that such postings are illegal.

The government will also ask the operators to strictly verify the identity of users when they open accounts on their sites.

However, criminal groups have been directing people who apply for yami baito to highly confidential communication apps, such as Signal, where they receive instructions to commit crimes.

The operators of some of these apps are not based in Japan, so Japanese authorities may be limited in sending requests to them.

The countermeasures also include early implementation of “disguised identity investigations,” in which police go undercover and apply for these dark part-time jobs.

(This article was written by Naoko Murai and Kenro Kuroda.)

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