Moderator: Reddit profited from leaked celeb pics

The leaked celebrity photo scandal has many angles by which to consider it troubling. On one hand, iCloud being hacked is alarming, and that raised eyebrow came well ahead of wondering who was responsible or why they'd even do such a thing. Now it seems Reddit, where many saw the pics initially, actually profited greatly from the event.

The pics, originally posted to 4Chan, were later linked to on a now-defunct Reddit thread named TheFappening. According to the moderators of that subreddit, they hit critical traffic mass on September 1, when they say they were drawing 141 million users daily.

By September 6, when Reddit finally played big-brother and shut them down, most of the visitors had their fill and were moving on.

Moderator John Menese says Reddit disclosed to him that enough members from TheFappening signed up for Reddit gold, their $3.99/month subscription layer, to run Reddit servers for a month. Menese more than hints Reddit was burning the candle at both ends, too:

If Reddit had wanted to, they could have banned us on Sunday when our traffic broke their servers. Instead, they chose to milk a week of publicity and a month of server time in Reddit gold before they stepped in. It's sad that Reddit already made their money and then made a show of banning the site.

Though Reddit hasn't responded to these claims, it's an alarming shot across their bow as good guys who police their site as they can with a small team. The subscriptions could have been a clue to the subreddit violating whatever terms caused them to be shut down — if that were Reddit's aim. Instead, it seems as though they'll save the day in the eleventh hour.

Source: Wired