THE PEOPLE BEHIND the hacking threat to actress Emma Watson are claiming it was a ‘viral marketing stunt’ to shut down the controversial website 4chan.
Over the weekend Watson made a well-received speech on gender equality at UN Headquarters in New York.
In what appeared to be a response to Watson’s speech, ‘hackers’ created a website called Emma You Are Next and threatened to leak nude photos belonging to the actress.
The website was believed to have been created by users of the website 4chan, where the first batch of hacked celebrity nude photos had been originally published.
According to Mashable, late yesterday the website’s countdown clock stopped and all visitors to the website were redirected to the page of an organisation called Rantic Marketing.
Visitors to the site are greeted by these messages:
The site also contains an open letter to President Barack Obama, which claims the company were hired by ‘celebrity publicists’ to call for internet censorship and the closing of 4chan.
So, to recap – the threat was orchestrated by this marketing organisation as a means of highlighting the need to censor the internet (good luck with that). There will be no leaking of photos. 4chan is not involved.
And everyone is in agreement that the method of ‘raising awareness’ is more than a bit sleazy:
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Watson has not yet commented on the furore.
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