The site has released a statement regarding the removal of 'subreddits' which are used to share stolen photos of numerous female celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton.
- Sep 8, 2014
AceShowbiz - Reddit removes "subreddits" such as "/r/TheFappening" which are used to share stolen photos of celebrities. On August 31, nude photos of celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Kirsten Dunst landed online following massive hacking. The revealing images, which first were spread on 4chan, later were shared to Reddit as well.
The site which usually lets the members self-police themselves explains the decision in a statement released over the weekend. "We put up a blog post explaining why we don't ban things for reason X (which some people want us to, but we will not), but at the same time behavior in a subreddit started violating reason Y (a pre-existing and valid rule for which we do ban things) and we banned it, resulting in much confusion," it reads.
"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," it continues. "We understand the harm that misusing our site does to the victims of this theft, and we deeply sympathize."
In other news, Apple's CEO Tim Cook also recently reacted to the leaks of celebrity nude photos. Denying that it was caused by a security breach in iCloud's system, Cook shared in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that they would send email alerts and push notifications when users make password changes, restore iCloud data to a new device or a device logged into the account for the first time. "We want to do everything we can do to protect our customers, because we are as outraged if not more so than they are," Cook said.
