A community on Reddit containing lewd remarks on photos of Filipino women was taken down due to violation of the platform’s policies and invasion of privacy rights.
The forum or subreddit called r/jakolandia featured photos of female celebrities and other private individuals with users making lewd comments and remarks. These images were purportedly taken from the accounts of women without their consent.
Reddit has taken down this page after an uproar.
Similar groups in recent years have been banned for sharing highly offensive posts against women on social media.
A Reddit user, who was able to browse through it before being taken down, said that many photos were of their female relatives.
Can we talk about r / Jakolandia? from Philippines
“As I dove deeper, may mga posts dun na pictures ng kakilala nila (kaklase, co-worker, kapitbahay) from Facebook/IG with the usual manyak responses like ‘sarap naman nyan,’ ‘ang puti sarap tamuran,’ etc,” the Reddit user said.
“That sub is a cesspool of sexually frustrated disgusting men who shares and jacks off to the photos of unaware people they personally know or even photos of underage teens/kids,” the user added.
Twitter user @jannzilcarub shared screenshots of her photo included in a thread in the subreddit with a fabricated story of her being gang raped. The story, however, was told in an unpleasant, disconcerting way.
Last year, group pages that similarly contained inappropriate content of women and young girls collectively called “pastor culture” circulated on Facebook. Many of these groups have since been shut down after being reported.
Laws and policies on online content
The following types of content are unwelcome or prohibited according to Reddit:
- Involuntary pornography
- Sexual or suggestive content involving minors
- Encourages or incites violence
- Threatens, harasses, or bullies or encourages others to do so
- Personal and confidential information
- Impersonation of someone
- Soliciting or facilitating any transaction or gift involving certain goods and services
- Spam
Users who see content that contain “nudity, pornography, or profanity” can be added with a Not Safe for Work tag and Quarantine tag.
Based on Reddit, quarantined communities exhibit “a warning that requires users to explicitly opt-in to viewing the content.”
“The purpose of quarantining a community is to prevent its content from being accidentally viewed by those who do not knowingly wish to do so, or viewed without appropriate context,” its website said.
Meanwhile, the processing of personal information, which may include photos of the owners, without their consent is prohibited under Data Privacy Act of 2012.