Around the same time as last year’s ‘Fappening’ – a nude photo hack of over a hundred celebrities which saw photos of famous women leaked to the internet – a lot of us were hearing about Reddit.
Though the photos were hacked and leaked by a 4Chan user, so many of them were shared on Reddit. Why? Well, the entire site is, much like every other social media, about sharing comments, photos, videos with strangers. However, some of its sub-forums have got a reputation for letting people post nude images of people without their permission – sometimes known as revenge porn.
Reddit has now, about six months later, responded to the leak (and to the loads of revenge porn images of non-famous women) by banning the images.
A notice posted on the site about its new policy read, ‘Last year, we missed a chance to be a leader in social media when it comes to protecting your privacy – something we’ve cared deeply about since Reddit’s inception. At our recent all hands company meeting, this was something that we all, as a company, decided we needed to address.’
Alexis Ohanian, Reddit’s co-founder and executive chairman (the site looks like it was made on a calculator in 1996, but it’s actually owned by Condé Nast, the same people who own the likes of Vogue, Tatler and GQ), told* The Verge*, ‘I really want to believe that as we enter the next 10 years of Reddit life, essentially the most trafficked media site on the internet, the opportunity here to set a standard for respecting the privacy of our users.’
It’s late news, but it’s great news, and change forever the way the internet treats too many women. Yes, the Reddit users who are into uploading or viewing sexual images of unwilling participants could just hop over to another site to enjoy their twisted pastime. But Reddit could also be setting a precedent for these other sites to change their ways.
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Picture: Ada Hamza
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.