Remember The Fappening? Alright, stupid question, but remember the how The Fappening started? Basically, a bunch of nude celebrity pics were posted to Reddit and the rest is viral history.
Reddit, fresh with $50 million in venture capital cash, needed to make some changes. The changes start now, according to the New York Times.
For nearly a decade, Reddit, the huge online message board, has been known for its freewheeling stance on letting its users govern themselves. That has resulted in an outpouring of user-generated content — for better or, sometimes, for worse — that attracts nearly 160 million regular users to the site.
Now, Reddit is starting to change its views, if only ever so slightly. Reddit announced a change to its privacy policy on Tuesday that prohibits posting nude photos or videos of people engaged in sex acts without their prior consent to have it posted.
That’s right — no more posting naked pictures of people without their consent means half the content anywhere real nude women exist on Reddit could dwindle down to nothing. Breathe, breeeeaatthhhe, and stay calm, r/GoneWild and r/Gone Mild are probably fine.
The change comes not only because of fallout from The Fappening but because of former subreddits. Remember Michael Brutsch and “Jailbait”? The sub dedicated to posting and trading photos of underage girls. Yeah, no more of that, says the cute little alien.
“I really want to believe that as we enter the next 10 years of Reddit life, essentially the most trafficked media site on the Internet, the opportunity here to set a standard for respecting the privacy of our users,” Alexis Ohanian, Reddit’s co-founder and executive chairman, said in an interview.
…and you can’t do that with unauthorized tits hanging around! I’m not sure how this rule change will be policed or monitored — will there be a person at Reddit asking “hey, did you know someone posted your vagina to the internet” but I’m guessing they’ve got some type of checks and balances system ready to be implemented. The NYT article states that “Jessica Moreno, Reddit’s head of community, said that someone who wants a photo removed ‘would need to contact Reddit at contact@reddit.com and alert us to the image with a link'” but that assumes all women would even find out about the photos.
In the meantime, start dragging your favorites pics to your desktop. I’d start with r/RealGirls. Because that’s where I started.
[H/T: New York Times]