Child Safety Standards

Scope

These standards apply to Halfway, the mobile app published by Akagawa Innovations, and to every part of the service where people can create, share, or send content: profiles, meetups, posts and captions, comments, in-app messages, shared lists, and invite links.

They are published publicly so that anyone — users, parents, researchers, regulators, or platform partners — can read what we prohibit and how to reach us.

Zero tolerance for child sexual abuse and exploitation

Halfway prohibits child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) absolutely. There is no context, framing, or intent that makes it permissible on our service, and there is no warning step before enforcement. We remove it and we terminate the accounts responsible for it.

By CSAE we mean any content or conduct that sexualises, exploits, or endangers a minor — anyone under 18 — including but not limited to:

• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM): any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor, whether photographic, recorded, drawn, animated, or generated by artificial intelligence.
• Sexualisation of minors: text, images, or captions that depict, describe, or present a minor in a sexualised manner, including content that is not itself explicit but is presented for sexual gratification.
• Grooming: building a relationship with a minor, or with someone who supervises a minor, in order to sexually exploit or abuse them.
• Sextortion: threatening to expose intimate imagery of a minor in order to obtain further imagery, sexual contact, money, or anything else of value.
• Solicitation and sexual conversation: soliciting sexual content or sexual contact from a minor, or engaging a minor in sexually explicit conversation.
• Trafficking and facilitation: advertising, recruiting, arranging, or otherwise facilitating the sexual exploitation of a minor.
• Distribution and signposting: sharing, requesting, or linking to CSAM or to off-platform locations where it can be obtained, including through coded or slang terminology.
• Using location features to endanger a minor: using midpoints, anchors, live location, meetups, or invite links to locate, contact, lure, or arrange to meet a minor for any of the purposes above.

Minimum age

Halfway is not directed to children. You must be at least 13 years old — or older, where the law in your country sets a higher minimum age for using an online service — to create a Halfway account. Onboarding asks for your age and blocks account creation below 13.

If we learn that an account belongs to someone under the minimum age, we remove the account and delete the associated data.

Reporting CSAE to us

Anyone can report suspected CSAE on Halfway, whether or not they have an account, and whether or not they are the person affected.

There are two ways to reach us:

• In the app: open the menu, tap Send Feedback, and choose the Safety category. Reports sent this way are flagged for review ahead of other feedback.
• By email: write to jimi@akagawa.in with the subject line Child Safety. Use this if you do not have the app, cannot sign in, or would rather not report from your account.

Whichever route you use, include the usernames or profile links involved, the meetup, post, comment, or message concerned, and the approximate date and time, as far as you are able. You can report anonymously by email; we do not require you to identify yourself.

We acknowledge child safety reports within 24 hours and act on them as a priority ahead of all other queues.

Please do not attach, forward, or re-share suspected CSAM. Describe where it is on Halfway and we will retrieve it ourselves. Re-sharing the material is itself unlawful in most jurisdictions, including Japan.

If a child is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first.

How we respond

When we identify or receive a report of CSAE, we:

• Remove the content from Halfway as soon as we have reviewed the report.
• Terminate the account responsible, permanently, along with any other accounts we can attribute to the same person. This is not a strike system; the first confirmed CSAE violation is the last.
• Preserve evidence — the content, account records, and associated metadata — as required for referral to authorities, rather than deleting it outright.
• Report apparent CSAM to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) via its CyberTipline, and to the Japanese National Police Agency or the relevant law enforcement authority in the jurisdiction concerned.
• Cooperate with law enforcement and respond to lawful requests relating to child safety investigations.

We do not require a court order or a lawyer's letter before acting on a credible child safety report.

Safety features in the product

Halfway is built so that the information which could be used to locate someone stays under that person's control:

• Live location is off by default, runs only for a duration you choose, and is visible only to mutual followers — people you follow who also follow you back.
• Your saved anchor location can be hidden from everyone, limited to mutual followers, or withheld from specific people through the "Hide From" list.
• Meetup share links open a generic preview card that never names the meetup, so a link forwarded into a group chat does not disclose where anyone is going.
• Friend and meetup invite links are single-use and tied to the account that created them.
• Accounts can be set so that people who are not already connected to you cannot discover you.

These controls are described in full in our Privacy Policy.

Legal compliance

Akagawa Innovations complies with the child safety laws applicable to Halfway in the markets where it is distributed. This includes our obligations to report apparent child sexual abuse material to the appropriate national authority, to preserve related records, and to cooperate with lawful investigations. We keep these standards under review as those obligations change.

These standards sit alongside our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy. Where the Terms permit us to suspend or remove an account, CSAE is treated as the most serious category of violation.

Child safety point of contact

Jimi Akagawa — Child Safety Contact, Halfway
Email: jimi@akagawa.in
Company: Akagawa Innovations
App website: https://halfway.one/
Developer website: https://akagawa.in/

This address is monitored for child safety matters and is the contact we have registered with Google Play for CSAE enquiries.

Changes

We may update these standards as the product, the law, or platform requirements change. Updates are posted on this page and the "Last updated" date above is revised.