Watch FIFA World Cup 2026™

LIVE, FREE and EXCLUSIVE starting June 12 2026

Reddit bans pages used to share nude celebrity photos

Social media sharing site Reddit has banned the message boards that shared leaked nude photos of celebrities, including US actress Jennifer Lawrence.

Jennifer Lawrence
Jennifer Lawrence (Getty)

Three message threads - known as subreddits - were banned after users took to the the forums to share the leaked photos.

An error message now appears on the threads saying: "this subreddit has been banned".

Reddit rejected claims the decision to shut down the pages was due to pressure, saying the message threads had violated community rules.

In a statement posted on its blog, Reddit said it "deplore[d] the theft of these images and we do not condone their widespread distribution."

The statement acknowledged that Reddit has been used as "one of the primary centres of distribution" of the "unlawfully obtained images".

News that makes sense

Your trusted source for staying up-to-date with the world around you. Get free daily news updates and analysis, straight to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

"In accordance with our legal obligations, we expeditiously removed content hosted on our servers as soon as we received DMCA requests from the lawful owners of that content, and in cases where the images were not hosted on our servers, we promptly directed them to the hosts of those services," the statement read.

But the company said the decision did not reflect a broader change in its policy on banning content.

"Having said that, we are unlikely to make changes to our existing site content policies in response to this specific event."

 

The leaked photos of celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence, Avril Lavigne and Rihanna, were hacked from a cloud storage system.

Tech company Apple have said it's strengthening the iCloud security features after the incident.

Part of the upgraded features will include sending users alerts during password changes or when someone logs on from a new gadget.


2 min read

Published

Updated


Share this with family and friends


Get SBS News straight to your inbox

Sign up now for daily news from Australia and around the world. You can also subscribe to Insight's weekly newsletter for in-depth features and first-person stories.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Follow SBS News

Download our apps

Listen to our podcasts

Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service

Stream now

Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world