Intimate photos 'stolen by scorned partners and shared on Reddit'
Revenge porn Reddit: How women are facing rape threats as their intimate photos are stolen by scorned partners or lifted from Instagram and Tiktok and shared on social media platform
- Thousands of women are finding their nude images on Reddit without consent
- A mob of users are sharing women’s private pictures with their contact details
- One victim was suicidal at finding naked videos of herself and dozens of insults
- Reddit insists it takes down non-consensual images, including 88,000 last year
Thousands of people are being harassed by an anonymous mob after their private images were stolen and shared on social media platform Reddit.
Reddit, which allows its 50 million users to host their own forums known as ‘subreddits’, has hundreds of threads dedicated to sharing intimate photos, mainly focusing on women.
Some risqué images are lifted from women’s Instagram and Tiktok accounts, but other more revealing pictures are often uploaded to the site by embittered exes.
Underneath the images are typically dozens of vicious and demeaning comments, including rape threats, a BBC Panorama report found.
Many users also devote their time to ‘doxing’ women by sharing their personal details and addresses.
Panorama journalist Monika Plaha said she was brought to the site by a tip-off and ‘felt sick’ going through some of the forums.
Thousands of people, mainly women, are being harassed by an anonymous mob after their private images were stolen and shared on social media platform Reddit (Stock image)
Revenge porn: What is the law in the UK?
Revenge porn laws came into affect in the UK in 2015 as part of the Criminal Justice and Court Act.
The Act makes it a criminal offence for a person to: ‘disclose a private sexual photograph or film if the disclosure is made (a) without the consent of the individual who appears, and (b) with the intention of causing that individual distress’.
It means those who maliciously share sexually explicit images without the subject’s consent could face up to two years in prison.
The law covers the sharing of images both on and offline. Images posted to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are covered by the offence, as are those that are shared via text message, email, on a website or via physical distribution.
The offence covers photographs or films which show people engaged in sexual activity or depicted in a sexual way or with their genitals exposed.
She wrote: ‘The first one I looked at was focused on South Asian women and had more than 20,000 users, most of whom seemed to be men from the same community, with comments in English, Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi.
‘Some of the women I recognised because they had large social media followings. A few I even knew personally.
‘There were more than 15,000 images. We looked at a thousand of them and found sexually explicit pictures of 150 different women. All were being dehumanised as sexual objects in the comments. I was sure none of the women would have consented to appearing on this forum.’
Another thread saw a man offer to share an entire file of intimate photos of a woman for £5, while another asked for the woman’s social media accounts.
One victim, using the name Ayesha, described finding nude videos of herself uploaded on the site last year and alleges she was filmed by an ex-boyfriend without her consent.
She faced a wave of harassment as her details were shared online, with men demanding sex and threatening to send the videos to her family, knowing she came from a strict Pakistani background which did not approve of sex before marriage.
After attempting suicide, she told her parents what had happened and said they both fell into a depression.
When she attempted to contact Reddit, one video was taken down swiftly while it took four months for another to be removed.
Panorama tracked down the Reddit user who created the forum targeting South Asian women, including Ayesha, and identified him as Himesh Shingadia, a university-educated manager at a large firm.
He deleted his subreddit after Panorama contacted him and told the programme it was only intended to ‘appreciate South Asian women’.
Reddit, which allows its 50 million users to host their own forums known as ‘subreddits’, has hundreds of threads dedicated to sharing intimate photos, mainly focusing on women
Reddit allows sexual images but has attempted to clamp down on non-consensual pictures after several high profile incidents.
In 2014, the site became notorious when a cache of female celebrities’ private images were shared on the site.
Four years later, the site’s moderators shut down a group dedicated to using ‘deepfake’ technology to superimpose celebrities’ faces on to porn videos.
The trend is regarded as a continuing evolution of revenge porn, and has persisted despite Reddit’s status as a mainstream platform.
In December, it was reported that revenge porn had soared during the pandemic with the number of offences increasing by 329 per cent over a 13-month period in London – with some victims as young as ten.
The data, released by the Metropolitan Police through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, showed the number of cases rose by 698 between October 1, 2020 and October 31, 2021.
Shockingly, the number of victims between the ages of 10 and 17 quadrupled compared to the previous year.
In response to Panorama’s report, Reddit said it had taken down over 88,000 non-consensual sexual images in 2021 and takes the issue ‘extremely seriously’.
It says it employs a team of staff to root out private images shared without the users consent. It adds that it regularly takes action, including closing down forums.
‘We know we have more work to do to prevent, detect, and action this content even more quickly and accurately, and we are investing now in our teams, tools, and processes to achieve this goal,’ a spokesman said.
MailOnline has approached Reddit for comment.
- BBC Panorama: Trading Nudes airs on BBC One tonight at 8pm and is also available on iPlayer.
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