MaleGeneral Makes Revenge Porn Even Worse By Mocking Its Victims

One of the worst aspects of our new modern age is the existence of revenge porn. If you’re somehow not aware, it’s when a website collects and shares nude images of people without their consent. Though 38 states have outlawed revenge porn, that hasn’t stopped MaleGeneral, a 4chan-inspired spinoff site devoted to sharing pictures of men for men, from sharing thousands of pictures.

To be fair, some MaleGeneral posters are posting their own pics. However, many of the posts are people posting a picture of a man they know (either in person or just online) and asking if anyone has nudes of them. It doesn’t matter where the nudes are from — if you shared a photo with someone you thought you trusted for their eyes only, it could appear here.

If that weren’t bad enough, though there is a procedure for removal requests, MaleGeneral mocks them. To make a removal request, one must take a photo of themselves holding up a card with their personal information on it. Should you do it “incorrectly,” they’ll post that photo too. If one goes direct to their ISP, MaleGeneral will mock you by posting your request — and in some cases, the photos you tried to remove — to a wiki where they refer to users as “turds” and “retards.” (Obviously, we are not linking to MaleGeneral nor the “removal request” wiki page.)

In a Dazed exposé, it’s alleged that teens are even involved. The article mentions at least one post of a boy under the age of 18.

Unfortunately, though sites like MaleGeneral are be committing crimes by posting nudes nonconsensually, it can be difficult to bring a case. Dazed spoke with Alex Haydock, a legal assistant from the Open Rights Group. Haydock said:

It is possible that posting these images may be a criminal offence under the so-called ‘Revenge Porn’ law, but that would require intent to cause the victim distress, which is difficult to prove. Laws around harassment and copyright may apply in some circumstances, but this still leaves some room for people to share explicit images without permission.

Last November, the ENOUGH Act, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) was brought before the Senate. The ENOUGH Act would federally ban revenge porn. Unfortunately, beyond referring the bill to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations in January, no movement has been made on the bill.

 

Featured image by SolStock