Revenge Porn

2000termclassic

Published September 24, 2026

Revenge Porn refers to sexually explicit images or videos posted online without the subject's consent, most often by former partners trying to humiliate them. What began with 1980s magazine features and Usenet trading grew into a wave of dedicated submission sites like IsAnyoneUp.com and UGotPosted between 2010 and 2013, producing the first U.S. conviction of a revenge porn site operator in 2015.

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Overview

The practice typically pairs private nude photos or videos of a former partner with identifying details, real name, hometown, and links to Facebook profiles, so anyone who finds the page can tie the images back to the subject3. Some operators ran that pattern as a business, accepting anonymous submissions and, in at least one case, charging the people pictured hundreds of dollars to have the photos removed through a companion site2.

Italian researcher Sergio Messina labeled the earlier version of the format "realcore" in 2000 after tracking it in Usenet groups, drawing a line between genuine ex-partner uploads and staged amateur content passed off as real1. By the early 2010s the phrase "revenge porn" was in common use, though critics argued the label puts blame on victims and treats recorded sexual abuse as entertainment4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Usenet (early trading) / dedicated submission sites (viral spread)
Date
2000

The earliest documented case appeared in Hustler magazine's 1980 "Beaver Hunt" feature, which printed nude photos of a woman taken during a camping trip and stolen from her husband, alongside fabricated captions about her sexual interests1. She later sued the magazine, setting a template for the consent disputes that followed.

Two decades later, Italian researcher Sergio Messina identified an emerging Usenet subgenre of ex-partner material and named it "realcore" in 20001. The specific phrase "revenge porn" was in wider use by 2008, when the video aggregator XTube said it was getting two to three complaints a week from people whose exes had uploaded intimate videos in anger1.

How It Spread

In 2010, New Zealand housepainter Joshua Ashby logged into his ex-girlfriend's Facebook account and posted a nude photo of her that stayed live for 12 hours, drawing an early prison sentence tied to the practice3. That August, Hunter Moore launched IsAnyoneUp.com, which paired reader-submitted nudes with subjects' full names and Facebook links and drew wide attention for Moore's habit of taunting victims in interviews1. Moore closed the site in April 2012 and sold the URL to an anti-bullying charity after reports of an FBI investigation1.

San Diego's Kevin Bollaert pushed the model further with UGotPosted, which took in more than 10,000 anonymous submissions between 2012 and 2013 while a companion site offered to remove images for up to $3502. Prosecutors said Bollaert made tens of thousands of dollars from the scheme, and a San Diego County jury convicted him of identity theft and extortion in February 2015 in the first case against a revenge porn site operator2. Advocacy groups pressed for state-level bans throughout the same period.

Coverage widened in 2013 when Florida lawmakers proposed making the act a felony punishable by up to five years1, and California passed its own revenge porn law, though prosecutors did not use it against Bollaert2.

Frequently Asked Questions