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Responding to Celeb Photo Leaks, Reddit Scotches "Fappening" Subreddit

4chan might have introduced a DMCA policy, but Reddit goes farther: VentureBeat reports that the online community known as The Fappening has been dissolved by Reddit, in response to its use in posting and sharing many of the photos leaked from dozens of celebrities. This isn’t the first time Reddit has decided to take action to ban certain questionable communities from its site, as its previously killed other subreddits like Creepshots for similar invasions of privacy as well as banned well-known power users shown to enable such actions. ... Reddit system admin Jason Harvey (aka “alienth”) attempted to cool some of the fuss by starting that discussion about why the company decided to ban the subreddit. Most of it boils down to Reddit waiting too long to speak up about it before making the decision to ban, while assuming its users would mostly understand why it took place. ... “If Reddit is truly to be a platform that’s open in any way, it needs transparency when (heavy handed) actions such as these are taken,” said Reddit user SaidTheCanadian in response to Harvey, while also suggesting the company create a “public log” of sorts showing all banning actions as well as explanations for each instance of a banned community. “I don’t want to be part of a community where community voices are silenced without meaningful notice or explanation. (No one really does like that secret police feeling.)”

8 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Sub Reddits that still aren't banned... by SternisheFan · · Score: 4, Insightful
    From the link below...

    Yishan Wong, the chief executive officer of Reddit, has tried to explain why the site has not banned certain subreddits (sections of the website where users share items connected to a specific topic) despite banning the subreddit which contained the stolen pictures of nude celebrities.

    In a Reddit thread under the title “Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul” [sic], Mr Wong wrote: “I did not say ‘we won’t ban any subreddits ever’. I said that we don’t ban subreddits for being morally bad. We do ban subreddits for breaking our rules, and one of them is repeatedly and primarily being a place where people post copyrighted material for which valid DMCA requests are being received.”

    Essentially, the company refuses to ban subreddits for being “morally bad” but will if they break any laws or any of the website’s own rules.

    http://i100.independent.co.uk/...

    1. Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned... by Iamthecheese · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Interesting that you would bring up misogyny but not the great amount of misandry. You even went out of your way to do so since "sexism" would have been easier to address. In any case I, for one, feel censorship is always evil. It's a slippery and well traveled slope from censoring things that make most people uncomfortable to censoring things with which the zietgeist disagrees.

      --
      If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
  2. Re:Bah humbug censorship by Renozuken · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't wanna be strangled? Don't have a neck. Don't want your car stolen? Don't own a car. Stealing is wrong no matter the context.

  3. Re:Bah humbug censorship by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about grasping that I can do with my body whatever I want. Upload my photoes where ever I want.

    But you may not download, upload my photos anywhere! You shall not hack my account! Regardless if it is my private PC at home or my cloud storage!

    What about telling those people who get shot every year not to stand in front of a killer wiht a gun?

    What about telling everyone who get mugged or rubbed not to have a $600 iPhone with him, or a $2000 laptop or not $1000 in cash. It is all their fault if they get deprived from their 'property'!??

    You attitude likely comes from your desire to see the nude pics of those women yourself ...

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  4. Re:Bah humbug censorship by JustShootMe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Your last sentence is pretty close to an ad hominem. The GP post is probably a troll. So why I'm posting here is beyond me. Maybe I'm bored.

    Here's the thing. It's true that in a perfect world, you should have complete control of what happens to the stuff you post, just like you should have complete control over what happens to your body.

    This isn't, unfortunately a perfect world.

    Protecting yourself is a virtue, not a vice. And giving advice on how to protect yourself is not necessarily "blaming the victim".

    Let me put it another way: to use some analogies that have been put forth in other comments, if there is a place in town where someone gets raped every single night, maybe two or three people, and you deliberately going to that place at night, alone... do you really think it's going to do any good to just tell whomever you encounter "don't rape me?"

    When it would never have happened if you'd just not gone?

    Protect yourself. Don't do stupid stuff. At the end of the day, you do have *some* control over your circumstances. Don't give up that control just because someone else does something stupid too.

    --
    For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
  5. Re:Bah humbug censorship by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Uploading nude selfies to the cloud is stupid and naive.

    It's not like they actively did so. It's simply an online backup, which is enabled when setting up the phone. You can opt out, but of course backing up is the recommended action. And quite rightly so. There is more chance of people being harmed by losing all the photos of the kids when a phone dies than there is of the account being hacked and photos being taken.

    Consider also that the technicalities of a backup are beyond most non-technical consumers. Which is the group most people, including celebrities, fall in to.

    Again, blaming the victims is just wrong.

  6. Re:Bah humbug censorship by JustShootMe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I completely disagree with you. Particularly the last sentence, which, again, is coming close to an ad hominem. I didn't make that argument and I wasn't going to.

    I don't upload photos that I don't want distributed widely to iCloud. I figure if I do that I'm just asking for whatever happens. And that is the way *I* look at it when it comes to my own business, so I won't listen to anyone telling me I'm wrong.

    I'm done here. One can never win this kind of argument because there is never any rationality to it. It's all emotional.

    --
    For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
  7. All this fuss... by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All this fuss, because the victims were famous. If someone posted naked pictures of any of us on the internet, the police would laugh at us. Would the FBI get involved? Would subreddits get deleted? Hell no... If there's any great tragedy in this whole mess, it's that it highlights the class divide in this country. If you're famous, you get more rights than the rest of us.

    Thousands of people have their nude photos leaked to the net every day. Reddits FULL of them. Suddenly now it's a big deal. I've no sympathy for these people, not because it's their fault, but because this is just a small dose of what it's like to be normal. Cry me a river.