In the early hours of the still-ongoing news cycle about the theft and leak of nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities, lots of details were scrambled by traditional news sources that did not know much about how such items are passed around in the nether regions of the Interwebs.
For example, lots of Facebook users passed around the rumor that nude Jennifer Lawrence photos had been stolen from her computer by a “hacker named 4Chan”, or sometimes, “Chan4”. Not too many traditional media folk hang out on 4Chan, so maybe this was a bit much to expect them to know better.
Then came the news that the images were being “hosted in Reddit”. This was another bit of misinformation. Some apparently believed that Reddit was a news site, perhaps like PerezHilton or the like, that was choosing to show the photos.
In fact, someone asked one of the oldest Redditors about this. His name is William Shatner, and Shat knows his way around. Since he often haunts Reddit and participates in discussions, someone thought to ask him if he would now boycott the site.
@WilliamShatner Since #Reddit is the site that is 'hosting' the stolen nude photos, would you be willing to lead the celeb exodus & boycott?
— Donna Gibson (@GibsonDonalgbsn) September 3, 2014
Shatner did not take the bait, and corrected the misconception.
.@GibsonDonalgbsn @reddit doesn't "host" images. Also it was 4Chan that was involved. I would get the details straight first.
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) September 3, 2014
Someone told Shatner that tech site Mashable was reporting that the images were “on Reddit”. Rather than believe them, Shatner reached out to the editor-at-large of Mashable, Lance Ulanoff, right there within the thread.
“@GibsonDonalgbsn: @WilliamShatner @reddit Mashable is reporting the images are on Reddit” @LanceUlanoff, is this true?
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) September 3, 2014
The Mashable article in question stated that “Reddit administrators have told users of a subreddit dedicated to the leaked images that nude pictures of [underage McKayla] Maroney need to be removed from the site because they may be considered child porn.”
That article linked to a Daily Dot article that claimed that Reddit “is one of the few mainstream websites that isn’t proactively deleting all links to” the leaked photos.
Shatner pointed out the error. Sites like Reddit can link to photos, but they are hosted elsewhere. And Imgur was working overtime to take the illegal images down as they found them.
.@GibsonDonalgbsn @reddit @LanceUlanoff @mashable I see where Reddit is mentioned but it's not made clear that images are not hosted there.
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) September 3, 2014
@GibsonDonalgbsn @reddit @LanceUlanoff @mashable A subreddit is tantamount to a group or page on FB but you need to use an outside pic host
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) September 3, 2014
As user jwatt said…
Wow!! @WilliamShatner know more about what's going on than the damn media. Don't know if that's good on Shat or bad journalism at media
— jwatt (@Gtwy) September 3, 2014