The shared collection consisted of approximately 200 pictures of high-profile celebrities which include Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst and Jennifer Lawrence. Users have accessed the photos through the subreddit TheFappening which became the infamous hub for the stolen nude photos.
TheFappening instantly became a distribution center for the explicit images that were posted online through 4Chan. Visitors to /r/thefappening can now see a door image on the page with the yellow "caution" strip, indicating that the page is not accessible and that users are not allowed to enter.
Moderators behind TheFappening started to panic upon learning that the uploaded nude photos of U.S. Olympic athlete McKayla Maroney were taken when she was under 18. In the U.S., sharing the photos of someone who is under age is considered as a child pornographic act.
The posted explicit images caused a huge surge in traffic to the site which at one point posed a threat that the site could crash.
"This nightmare of the weekend made myself and many of my coworkers feel pretty awful," said Jason Harvey, a systems administrator at Reddit. "I had an obvious responsibility to keep the site up and running, but seeing that all of my efforts were due to a huge number of people scrambling to look at stolen private photos didn't sit well with me personally, to say the least. We hit new traffic milestones, ones which I'd be ashamed to share publicly."
Initially, the moderators took down the pictures in order to comply with the notices that came from the owners of the images. However, they found themselves conceding to a defeat when the images were reposted.
"It became obvious that we were either going to have to watch these subreddits constantly, or shut them down," said the site in a statement. "We chose the latter."
The statement gained several criticisms which say that the site's decision is a form of censorship. Users also believe that the site's earlier statement saying that it is not banning the subreddit adds confusion to the issue.
When it comes to moderating the posts, Reddit has traditionally taken a full hands-off approach as it treats its communities more like in an open forum setting.
Reddit gives its users the complete liberty in choosing the things that they want to post, what they want to read and what type of subreddit they want to create on the site. Even the enforcement of rules is placed as a responsibility on the users. Whatever they do, the site will not try to interfere. It explains that this action does not mean that they don't care but rather it means that the site trusts its users in making their choices between what is right and what is wrong.
