Revenge porn

Kelly Hinson is a 27-year-old expectant mother who was approached by a man while out shopping. He knew her name and recognized her from explicit photos that he saw on the Internet.

Hinson was shocked. True, she’d taken the photos, but she didn’t know that a former partner had posted them online. Nor was she aware that underneath the photos were her name and personal information, including contact information, which were also made public.

Anonymous commentators knew a lot of private information about her, including that she was currently pregnant: They joked that she should abort her fetus with a rusty coat hanger.

Unfortunately, as Hinson would soon discover, she wasn’t alone in this experience. “Revenge-porn,” or “cyber-rape,” is a very real problem in a large number of women in our society.

The purpose of such sites is for jilted ex-partners to post women’s photos, names and contact information (including links to social media accounts and in some cases the website for a victim’s place of employment).

While the Internet already abounds with nude photos of women taken consensually, these websites specify that the women didn’t post the photos. Instead they operate on the basis of humiliating and harassing women, and often end up destroying their lives and careers.

Commentators track down more information and include it alongside the photos. There’s no way to prevent hacking even more private data. So, while some women who find their images on these sites know exactly who posted the information,
others don’t.

At least one woman’s photos were taken out of a private folder on her desktop meant to document weight loss; she never shared them with anyone and has no idea who put them on the Internet.

Other women’s photos appear to have been taken through a window by a stranger or during sex, without their knowledge. Even more horrifying: Many of these photos are actually of underage girls, or girls who just turned 18.

There’s little that women who find themselves on these sites can do. In the case of underage photos, the sites will occasionally take down the photos if a lawyer can prove they are child pornography, but women over 18 are told nothing can be done because they chose to take these photos.

Some women have been able to get their photos removed, but it requires credit card payments to the site to do so. Even if the photos and social media links are removed, they’re already out on the Internet and there’s nothing to stop viewers from saving them or posting them elsewhere.

The psychological, social and emotional impacts of discovering your photos on these websites are pretty astounding.

One anonymous woman recounts discovering her ex had uploaded photos: She Googled her name and the first 10 results all contained nude photos. At work, she started receiving emails from strangers who’d discovered her photos. Someone sent them to all of her coworkers from a fake email account purporting to be her.

She soon quit her job. She has dealt with stalking and lives in constant fear that she’s a target for sexual assault. However the police told her they couldn’t do anything; the photos legally belonged to the ex because she’d sent them while in a long-distance relationship.

Despite paying thousands of dollars to have her photos removed, they kept reappearing. Eventually she changed her name and founded endrevengeporn.com, a website to help other women going through the same experience. Her photos are still online.

Last month, 23 women came forward and filed a class-action lawsuit against Texxxan.com and its host, Go Daddy. However, these “revenge porn” sites exist in a grey area and it’s likely, according to legal experts, that even though Texxxan.com may be taken down, women will see little recourse. Hundreds of these sites will continue to exist.

The most famous of these, IsAnyoneUp.com, has since been removed, but not before its founder, Hunter Moore (who, incidentally, Rolling Stone called the most hated man on the Internet), boasted publicly about how much money he’d made off the site.

“Do you know how much money I’d make?” Moore said about the possibility of a woman exploited on his site committing suicide. It’s estimated that in its heyday Moore’s site received 300,000 hits a day, which translates to up to $20,000 a month in advertisement revenue.

Moore is abhorrent. He has publicly acknowledged that he receives about 50–60 photos of underage girls a day, including photos of 9-year-olds. He’s admitted to sleeping with 18-year-olds on their birthdays and then snapping photos of driver’s licenses to prove it. And he was once arrested for head-butting a
go-go dancer.

According to these sites, and the men like Moore who run them, they’re not at fault. Instead they blame the men who post photos. “Why should I care? It’s not my life. It is literally just a business. It’s stupid not to monetize it,” Moore’s quoted as saying.

Men who post photos of women without their consent are perpetrating abuse, as are the sites that encourage and make money off of this type of exploitation. But I’m actually more concerned about the people who look at these sites.

The truth is, we all know these people. I’ve met more than a few men who’ve admitted to me that they’ve been to these sites. I actually ended a relationship with someone because he couldn’t see that even just visiting these sites
hurts women.

These sites make money off of each hit they receive. If you visit these sites, please realize that you, and the revenue your visit provides, are their raison d’etre.

“In a perfect world there would be no bullying and there would be no people like me and there would be no sites like mine…But we don’t live in a perfect world,” Moore said.

He might be right, but by refraining from viewing revenge porn, you can take a subtle but much-needed action toward helping to put people like him and sites like his out of business.