Inside the secret world of the nude trade

Women are facing threats and blackmail from a crowd of anonymous strangers after their personal details, intimate photos and videos were shared on the social media platform Reddit.

The BBC unmasked the man behind one of the groups, thanks to a second-hand lighter.

“5 pounds for your nudes, send me a private message.”

“I have some videos of her wanting to trade.”

“What are we going to do with her?”

I felt nauseous as I scrolled through the images and comments online.

There were thousands of photographs. A seemingly endless stream of naked or half-naked women. Underneath, men were posting cruel comments about women, including threats of rape. Much of what I saw was too explicit to share here.

A tip from a friend brought me to these images. One of her photos was taken from Instagram and posted on Reddit. It wasn’t nude, but it was accompanied by sexual and degrading language. She was worried about herself and other women.

What I found was an online marketplace. Hundreds of anonymous profiles dedicated to sharing, trading and selling graphic images — and it all seemed to take place without the permission of the women portrayed.

It looked like a new evolution of so-called revenge pornography, in which private sexual material is posted online without consent, often by ex-partners.

Not only were these intimate images being shared to an audience of thousands, but men—hidden behind anonymity—were banding together to expose the real-life identities of these women, a practice known as doxxing.

Addresses, phone numbers and social media profiles were being exchanged online — women were the target of sexual comments, threats and blackmail.

It felt like I had landed on a very shady corner of the internet, but this was all happening on one big social media platform.

Reddit calls itself “the front page of the internet”. It has an audience of around 50 million daily users, allowing people to create and manage forums, known as “subreddits”, dedicated to all kinds of interests. Most subreddits are harmless, but Reddit has a history of hosting controversial sexual content.

In 2014, a massive bundle of private images of celebrities was shared on the site, and four years later, Reddit shut down a group that was using “deepfake” technology — a kind of artificial intelligence — to superimpose celebrities on pornographic videos.

Responding to these controversies, the US-based company introduced stricter rules and tightened its ban on posting or threatening to post intimate or sexually explicit content from people without their consent.

I wanted to understand how intimate photos of women were still being shared on Reddit and how this affected victims.

So I wanted to find out who was behind it.

It was clear that the Reddit ban wasn’t working. We found dozens of subreddits dedicated to sharing intimate images of women across the UK.

The first one I saw was focused on South Asian women and had over 20,000 users, most of whom looked like men from the same community, with commentary in English, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi.

Some of the women I recognized because they had a huge following on social media. Some I even knew personally.

There were more than 15,000 images. We looked through thousands of them and found sexually explicit photos of 150 different women. All were being dehumanized as sex objects in the comments. I was pretty sure none of the women would have consented to appear on this forum.

Some, like the photo my friend discovered of herself, were images taken from women’s social media and weren’t explicit. But these images were published accompanied by degrading comments and, at times, calls to hack victims’ phones and computers in search of nudes.

One woman we contacted says she now receives sexual messages on her social media “every day” after the group posted an image of her, along with threats of rape.

The men on the subreddit were also sharing and selling photos of the women. These images looked like selfies sent between partners, not intended to be published.

There were also videos—even more explicit—where it looked like the women had been secretly filmed during sex.

‘I’ll find you’

A series of messages featured images of a naked woman performing oral sex.

“Does anyone have a video of this [palavrão]?”, an anonymous user asked, using a derogatory name for her.

“I have a whole folder of hers for £5, write to me,” said another.

“What’s her social media?” asked a third.

Ayesha (not her real name) discovered videos of her being shared on a subreddit last year. She believes she was secretly filmed by an ex-partner.

Not only did she have to deal with the breach of her trust, but she also faced a wave of harassment and threats on social media when her personal details were posted on the forum.

“If you don’t have sex with me, I’ll send it to your parents. I’ll find you… If you don’t agree to have sex with me, I’ll rape you.” Her stalkers tried to blackmail her for more images as well.

“As a Pakistani girl, it’s not right in our community for us to have premarital sex or anything like that – that’s not acceptable,” she says.

Ayesha stopped socializing or even leaving the house and ended up trying to take her own life. After her suicide attempt, she had to tell her parents what had happened. Her mother and father went into depression, she says.

“I felt so ashamed of everything that was going on and for putting them in this situation,” she says.

Ayesha has contacted Reddit several times. On one occasion, a video was deleted almost immediately, but it took four months to remove another. And it didn’t end there. The deleted content had already been shared on other sites and ended up appearing on the original subreddit a month later.

The subreddit that shamed and harassed Ayesha was created and moderated by a user named Zippomad — a username that would turn out to be the key to locating him.

As a moderator, Zippomad should ensure that his subreddit newsgroup follows Reddit’s rules. But he did the opposite.

Since first crawling his subreddit, I’ve seen him create new versions of the group three times — after each previous version was shut down by Reddit due to complaints. Each new incarnation wore a variation of the same name, which includes a racial slur too offensive to repeat. Each was filled with the same material — and each had thousands of active users.

The nude trade has become widespread enough that experts in online abuse have given it a name: collector culture.

Clare McGlynn, a law professor at Durham University who specializes in this type of online abuse, says, “This is not just a phenomenon of perverts or weirdos or other eccentrics who are doing this. There are a lot of them, it’s tens of thousands of men. “.

When Georgie was contacted by a stranger who said graphic images of her were being shared on the internet, she went to the police. She knew that only one person should have had access to these images.

“I can’t even calculate how many people have seen these images. And there’s no stopping more people from seeing them. Right now, right now, people might be looking at them,” she says.

Her ex-partner texted her to admit to sharing the footage, but told her he “didn’t want to hurt me or embarrass me.”

That part of his confession turned out to be a legal loophole. Existing legislation against revenge pornography across the UK requires proof that the person sharing photos without permission is doing so to cause the victim distress.

The Law Commission, an independent government advisory body, recommended removing the requirement to prove intent to cause harm. But the Online Security Bill currently underway in Parliament does not include this change.

I wanted to track down Zippomad, the Reddit user who created the forum aimed at South Asian women — including Ayesha. When looking at their comment history on the site, there was no real name, email address, or photos.

Only his username gave a clue as to who he was — he collected Zippo lighters and had one for sale. So I got in touch using a fake account and offered to buy it.

He agreed to set up a meeting and our undercover reporter finally came face to face with the man who had created the forum where so many women’s privacy had been violated.

His name is Himesh Shingadia. He has a university education and works as a manager in a large company. It wasn’t who I expected to find.

After the Panorama show contacted him, Shingadia deleted his subreddit. In a statement, he states that the group intended to “appreciate the women of South Asia”. Due to the large number of users, he says he found it impossible to moderate the forum.

He says he has never shared anyone’s private details or exchanged images, and claims he has helped remove sexually explicit material when requested by women.

“Zippomad is deeply ashamed of his actions, it does not reflect his true personality,” the statement reads.

Reddit also removed the other similar groups we highlighted for the company.

That means nearly a thousand women have finally had their images taken down – but that’s just after the pain of unwanted exposure.

Tech companies and lawmakers will need to make changes to prevent more women from being exploited by this trade.

As Georgie says of the ex-partner who shared his images: “I don’t want to punish him. I want him to never do that again.”

It’s in Brazil?

Article 218C of the penal code, introduced in 2018, establishes that offering, exchanging, transmitting, selling, distributing, publishing or disseminating, by any means – including the internet – photographs, videos or other audiovisual recordings that contain pornography or nudity without the consent of the victim, as well as scene or apology of rape or rape of vulnerable or sex scene, is a crime.

Anyone who receives, for example, a nude photo on WhatsApp and shares it – even without being the first to expose the image – is also considered an offender.

As a penalty, the law provides for imprisonment from one to five years, if the fact does not constitute a more serious crime. If the criminal is an ex-boyfriend and the disclosure is aimed at revenge or humiliation, this penalty can increase from one to two thirds.

If the images were shared by a guardian, stepfather, stepmother, brother, uncle, employer or any other title that the justice deems “authoritative” over the victim, the penalty can increase by 50%.

This text was originally published here