Reddit Bans Jennifer Lawrence’s, Celebs’ Stolen Nude Photos

Reddit has banned Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities’ hacked nude photos on the site. The social networking and news Web site ultimately shut down “The Fappening” subreddits, or the categories where the controversial stolen photos were posted.

Earlier in September, thousands of nude and sexy pictures of Lawrence and some female celebrities like Ariana Grande, Victoria Justice and Kate Upton have been leaked to the mediaboard 4Chan. The photos were downloaded and posted on several Web sites, including Reddit, which became a major access point for the images.

Read: Jennifer Lawrence’s Nude Photos and Videos Leaked by 4Chan Hacker

Reddit hit all-time high traffic after users posted links to the said photos on subreddits on the site, which have been called “The Fappening.” However, the site has now shut down the subreddits after releasing confusing statements regarding the matter.

CEO Yishan Wong originally said that “every man is responsible for his own soul,” and that they would therefore not ban people from posting links to the nude celebrity pictures.

“Nevertheless, reddit’s platform is structurally based on the ability for people to distribute, promote and highlight textual materials as well as links to images and other media. We understand the harm that misusing our site does to the victims of this theft, and we deeply sympathise,” he wrote.

“Having said that, we are unlikely to make changes to our existing site content policies in response to this specific event.”

He added that only the photos that have DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) requests for take down were removed.

However, as he made the announcement, a Reddit staffer contradictorily banned the nude celeb pics, which completely confused its users.

This led to the site releasing another statement, explaining their actions.

“The situation we had in our hands was the following: These subreddits were of course the focal point for the sharing of these stolen photos. The images which were DMCAd were continually being reposted constantly on the subreddit. We would take down images (thumbnails) in response to those DMCAs, but it quickly devolved into a game of whack-a-mole. We’d execute a takedown, someone would adjust, re-upload and then repeat,” the statement reads.

“This same practice was occurring with the underage photos, requiring our constant intervention.”

It added, “It became obvious that we were either going to have to watch these subreddits constantly, or shut them down. We choose the latter.”

While it appears that the site has finally done the moral thing to do about the celebrity nude hacking scandal, some users blasted Reddit for alleged hypocrisy.

“What about people in /r/photoplunder? What about /r/beatingwomen2? Thousands of pictures of women (amongst other things) are leaked and posted everyday on this site, and the only reason they are not banned and removed is because they don’t have the bank accounts to take legal action,” one user wrote as reaction to the ban.

Another user added, “I think most of us understand why /r/thefappening was taken down from a legal standpoint. But it’s just a weak argument to involve sentiment when there are a multitude of subreddits with ‘deplorable’ content that dwarfs stolen pics of nude celebs.”

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian previously defended the Web site from critics who said that they refused to remove stolen nude photos of non-celebrities. He said that Reddit doesn’t host the images, but just allows users to post the links to them.