Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Reddit Very Concerned With Privacy of Person Who Breached Privacy of Women

"Reddit has become a particular hub for the photos [that hackers illegal obtained of female celebrities]. While Reddit hosts none of the photos itself, its users are linking to them off-site and discussing them with impunity—and now the moderators of the new community (called a subreddit) r/thefappening claim that the site’s admins are aware of the photos and happy to see them shared on Reddit, despite the threat of legal action
Reddit’s site-wide rules forbid the posting of “person information,” which these photos certainly seem to constitute. Posting “publicly available” information on celebrities is acceptable—but “it is not okay” to post links to “screenshots of Facebook profiles,” or anything potentially “inviting harassment.” If a users’ Facebook photos are a no-go, then it seems implausible in the extreme to suggest that stolen intimate photos could not also be considered “personal information.” Despite this, links to previous leaked photos shared on the site—including of Demi Lovato and Jennette McCurdy—remain live, several months later."
Via a screenshot at The Daily Dot, a Reddit moderator also posted a note threatening that anyone who posted the private information about the person who leaked the photos would be banned.  Because of course.

I've engaged with many people on Internet who take a certain pride in their participation in "anything goes" forums on Internet, such as Reddit.  They think it makes them seem tough, while those who prefer to participate in forums with rules about commenting are "over-sensitive" and weak.  

I've written before and I'll repeat that for all their libertarian blustering about free speech, oftentimes the real agenda of many Internet abusers is the re-affirmation of a status quo that privileges people like themselves and aims to threaten, demean, and silence everyone else, particularly women. For, even white men likely feel very differently about their precious free speech rights when they, as a group, are maybe on the receiving end of loads of harassment, threats, and invasions of privacy (see also, on Privilege and Fear). 

Anyway, from now on, whenever I think of Reddit, I'll think of groups of loser men who whinge about government invasions of their privacy even as they huddle around their computers jacking off to illegally-obtained nude photos of women, masturbating less to the photos themselves and more to the fact that their Internet lair protects their ability to be creepy assholes in private most of all.

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