A new controversy is brewing over the type of content being posted on Reddit. Recent report from BBC shows how in the United Kingdom the platform has become a space for buy and sell photos and videos of women naked or having sex. Material that, in many cases, is created or distributed without your consent.
But the story doesn’t end there. Many of the women who see their intimacy being sold to tens of thousands of men on Reddit are also doxed. This means that their personal details – first and last name, address, phone number and social networks, both their own and family members – are publicly disclosed to strangers, who then try to blackmail them in order to get more material.
Photos and videos posted on subreddits which often do not pass moderation both on the forum itself and on Reddit itself. And while other non-sexual images stolen from social media are also circulating, each post is accompanied by thousands of brutal comments. From insults and disqualifications to threats of rape.
The report mentions cases where packages containing 500 sexually explicit photographs were offered for sale without consent. In some And at such modest prices that they started from 5 pounds sterling. Origin of content? Porn revenge, most of the time.
Women affected by this situation did not always receive the necessary response or support from Reddit. Victims interviewed mentioned that while the platform was quick to remove some posts, sometimes they have to wait 4 to 8 months for the material to disappear. And in other cases it is never cleared. This gives attackers time to share it on other websites or even publish it on different subreddits.
In the United Kingdom, they use Reddit to post intimate photos and videos.
As we already mentioned, doxeo is another big problem related to the traffic of intimate photos and videos on Reddit. Women who are victims of this situation receive messages from unknown persons who they harass them and threaten to divulge the contents to their relativesas a way to get more images or, directly, sexual relations: “If you don’t have sex with me, I’ll send it to your parents. I will come for you. sex with me, I’ll rape you.”
BBC managed to identify the author subreddit more than 20,000 users. When his name and occupation became public, he deleted the group and released a statement saying it had become so big that he couldn’t moderate it. He even assured that the original purpose of this was to “value the women of South Asia” as much of the content was relevant to the women of that region. However, it has been shown that every time Reddit closed a forum for violating its policy, it reopened it under a slightly different name.
What is the platform doing to prevent this from happening? Reddit claims that In 2021, nearly 90,000 non-consensual sexual images were removed.. But they acknowledge that this is not enough. “We know we still have a lot of work to do to prevent, detect and respond to this content even faster and more accurately. We are investing in equipment, tools and processes to achieve this goal,” they said.
Source: Hiper Textual
