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While the world of gaming has been embroiled in the whole #GamerGate fiasco, the celebrity bloggers and many an internet community have been frothing over something else entirely. The celebrity nude scandal, or if you'd rather, “The Fappening,” involved the leaking of hundreds of nude photographs of prominent actresses, models and athletes. Much of this has resulted in what you might expect from such an event, but Redditors in the official subreddit for The Fappening have also been donating to the Prostate Cancer Foundation in honour of Jennifer Lawrence's – alleged – donations to the same charity in the past.
At the last count, they'd raised over $6,000 (£3,640), but in the last hour the donation page has been officially shut down by the charity itself, with the following statement released on its official site:
“A post appeared on Reddit late Monday afternoon, September 1, 2014. A Reddit user directed other Reddit users to make a donation to the Prostate Cancer Foundation without the Foundation’s knowledge. We would never condone raising funds for cancer research in this manner. Out of respect for everyone involved and in keeping with our own standards, we are returning all donations that resulted from this post.”
The Redditors involved in the donation drive are understandably quite upset by the move, with some suggesting alternative charities that could receive the donations instead.
We've contacted the PRF and will update this story when we know more.
KitGuru Says: What do you guys think of this move? Were the donations a bit of a silver lining, or is this the leaked picture equivalent of blood money?
They have every right. It is down ‘n’ dirty publicity. But some form of 501c will certainly be glad to take a few grand.
I don’t think they have every right at all, and I’m not sure that there can be any sound logic to demonstrate the ethicality of returning an extra $6000+ (the final total would have been much more, especially if others had actually listened), which could have been spent on helping those with prostate cancer and contributions to research. The redditors (rightly) see that there’s no ethical problem with looking at the photos, given that no one will ever know (i.e. Jlaw will expect millions to be looking and be equally unhappy, even if in reality no one looks). That is, there’s no ethical problem with viewing them unless you believe in the concept of ‘sin’, which I’ll wager that the majority of the redditors involved don’t. Indeed, the only ethical problem is the initial invasion of privacy, and *potentially* the sharing of them. They’ve identified that Jlaw might be upset by the leak, and tried to find a way of actually making her happy – by donating to her charity of choice. That’s much more than I’ve seen anyone else do, whether they’ve looked at the pictures or not; it’s a form of social morality, and if our society had any real rational wits about it then we’d commend them. Instead we find the Prostate Cancer Foundation returning the money that they *could* spend ACTUALLY CURING CANCER. But no, they’d prefer to moralise.
tldr: weigh up rejecting $6000 for cancer research/aid vs. a debatable dubious moral association. Who’s the unethical one now?
Most rational thing I’ve read today!
When I checked out the fundraiser the total was at just over $16,000 not $6000.
I personally don’t agree with returning the money. The money is going to a good cause at the end of the day.
My mistake, It’s actually reached $25,000.
http://i.imgur.com/qJ4GgWf.jpg
This is publicity we speak of.
6 grand compared to being CNN’s next “AndersonGate” on sexual subreddits?
I’m far from the only one who thinks that earning money off of anyone’s unwanted attention or discomfort is not so ethically sound as you matter-of-factly state. In fact, sentiment probably has my opinion being a majority. In the real world, sentiment drives a lot of decisions and frankly regardless of what seems right in your rational ideal world, people would be offended and bad PR could amount to far more than 6K.
tl;dr An exchange requires two willing participants, so yes, they have every right. Rational=/=Practical. The campaign is plain tactless attention regardless of moral dilemmas.
To show the apparent spin to the empathetic world, go read the bloody Verge article. Never thought I’d recommend that site…
& if you find “sin” to be the only way to find an ethical conundrum in this, then I pity how quickly you’ll dehumanize an individual who isn’t in your immediate presence.
I was very clear in the comment that the initial privacy invasions and potentially the sharing of them are ethical problems. I guess you chose to ignore that bit though. My remark was simply teasing out the logic of the situation, but I suppose caricature and misrepresentation is the only weapon you’re able to use?
I found this out after as well.
This was one of the major points of my comment: you have to demonstrate a causal link between the donations and Jennifer Lawrence’s happiness. There isn’t one. The break lies in the viewers of the images: as I said, whether or not no one, 10,000 people, 1000,000 people or the whole world views the images, JLaw will not know, and therefore there’s a necessary divorce between the viewers, for whom there’s no ethical problem, and the hacker and those sharing them (including the press), for whom there is a serious ethical problem. Claiming a link between the hack and the donations (i.e. ‘making money off someone else’s misery) is just a tautology unless you can demonstrate one. And majority opinion does not add weight/validity to that opinion – nonetheless, my experience is the opposite. It seems like a lot of the mainstream press and definitely the net press were troubled by the privacy invasion but think returning the money is stupid. The negative press from that will affect them vastly more than the potential bad press of accepting the money.
Just to let you guys know, Wateraid have also now deleted the fundraiser page that was set up as the follow-on to PCF. I hate the world.
he reminds me of lawyers