Creepshot Successors and Stolen-Photo Communities (CandidFashionPolice, PhotoPlunder)
2012–2017
After r/CreepShots was shut down in 2012, near-identical communities — r/CandidFashionPolice (covert photos disguised as 'fashion critique') and r/PhotoPlunder (nudes scraped from misconfigured Photobucket accounts) — persisted for years, exposing how slowly Reddit enforced its own non-consensual imagery rules.
What happened
r/CreepShots, a community built around sexualized photos of women taken without their knowledge in public, was shut down in 2012 amid the Gawker exposé of moderator 'Violentacrez.' But the underlying activity simply migrated. Almost immediately it reappeared as r/CandidFashionPolice, where users posted the same kind of covert photographs thinly disguised as 'fashion critiques' — the subreddit largely consisted of non-consenting young women, with the community linking out to CreepShots archives. Reddit allowed it to operate for roughly three years before banning it around 2015.
A parallel community, r/PhotoPlunder, specialized in a different vector: users trawled the public 'recent uploads' feed of the image host Photobucket for nude photos that owners had mistakenly left publicly viewable, then re-hosted them elsewhere to evade detection and posted them to Reddit. Many victims had no idea their private images were being circulated; posts frequently noted when an album had 'recently gone private,' indicating owners discovering and trying to undo the exposure.
In February 2015 Reddit announced a formal policy against involuntary/non-consensual intimate imagery, effective March 10, 2015. Yet reporting through 2015-2017 documented that communities like r/PhotoPlunder remained active well after the policy. The pattern exposed the gap between Reddit's stated rules and its enforcement, and how easily banned communities re-emerge under cosmetic relabeling.
Impact
Demonstrated the durability of non-consensual imagery communities through rebranding and the lag between Reddit's stated policies and enforcement. The 2015 involuntary-nudity rule was a direct policy response, but its uneven application became a recurring criticism of Reddit's moderation.