Dear Playboy Advisor: Timeless Advice on Letting Go and Deleting Your Exes' Erotic Photos
You wouldn’t keep pictures of your ex on your desk, so why keep them on your phone?
As a birthday gift last year, my then girlfriend gave me erotic photos of herself. She made me promise never to show them to anyone, and I never have. We had a bad breakup, and now she wants them back. A friend who is a lawyer says I have no legal obligation to return them since they were a gift. I want to do the right thing but would like to keep them as mementos of our relationship. Despite how things turned out, I have good memories of our time together. What should I do?—S.W., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Keep your memories and return the photos. If you miss the photographs more than you miss her, you didn’t have a relationship worth remembering. (From the March 1998 Playboy)
Our 1998 Advisor’s advice to return the photos is still appropriate, but for reasons that go beyond one’s desire to hold on to memories—primarily, the rise of revenge porn. In 1998, dial-up internet was far from its zenith, with only 41 percent of adults online, according to a 1999 Pew Research Center report. Though porn was proliferating across the web, it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that camera phones became ubiquitous and ushered in the era of dick pics and nude selfies. That laid the foundation for revenge porn as we know it—and reaffirmed the necessity of honoring our exes’ wishes to return or delete erotic photos of them.
Revenge porn is defined by Merriam-Webster as “sexually explicit images of a person posted online without that person’s consent, especially as a form of revenge or harassment.” That definition may be misleading, however, according to the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, which reports that nearly 80 percent of perpetrators are not motivated by revenge or ill will toward the photo’s subject. As such, CCRI prefers the term nonconsensual pornography, as it encompasses the sharing of images originally obtained consensually—such as during an intimate relationship, as S.W.’s were—and those obtained without consent, such as via hidden cameras or hacking.
One of the original (and arguably most infamous) purveyors of revenge porn is Hunter Moore, creator of the now-defunct site Is Anyone Up? In 2012, the FBI began investigating Moore for posting nude photos of women, some of which had been submitted by men who wished to humiliate the subjects. The results were harrowing for the victims. In addition to being slut-shamed and bullied on the internet, some of the women went so far as to quit their jobs and change their names. (In other cases, revenge porn has even reportedly led to suicide.)
Revenge porn is defined by Merriam-Webster as “sexually explicit images of a person posted online without that person’s consent, especially as a form of revenge or harassment.” That definition may be misleading, however, according to the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, which reports that nearly 80 percent of perpetrators are not motivated by revenge or ill will toward the photo’s subject. As such, CCRI prefers the term nonconsensual pornography, as it encompasses the sharing of images originally obtained consensually—such as during an intimate relationship, as S.W.’s were—and those obtained without consent, such as via hidden cameras or hacking.
One of the original (and arguably most infamous) purveyors of revenge porn is Hunter Moore, creator of the now-defunct site Is Anyone Up? In 2012, the FBI began investigating Moore for posting nude photos of women, some of which had been submitted by men who wished to humiliate the subjects. The results were harrowing for the victims. In addition to being slut-shamed and bullied on the internet, some of the women went so far as to quit their jobs and change their names. (In other cases, revenge porn has even reportedly led to suicide.)
Return or destroy your ex’s nudes, and enjoy the memories.
The site was shut down in 2012. Moore, sentenced to two and a half years in prison for aggravated identity theft and illegally accessing someone else’s computer for financial gain, is already a free man and has written a book.
Despite Moore’s conviction, revenge porn has continued to infect our cultural psyche to an alarming degree. Numerous reports have surfaced of hackers infiltrating cell phones, cloud storage sites, personal laptops and other digital spaces where people commonly store intimate photos. Female celebrities including Rihanna, Kate Upton, Miley Cyrus, Kirsten Dunst, Gabrielle Union and Jennifer Lawrence have become targets of nonconsensual pornography. Speaking to Vanity Fair about her experience, Lawrence called the data breach a “sex crime.” Male celebrities haven’t been spared either: Nick Hogan, Cheyenne Jackson and Tyler Posey have all had their personal photos leaked online.
Many people have argued that apps such as Snapchat and the Facebook-owned Instagram, both of which allow users to send and receive private images that expire after viewing, have contributed to the rise of revenge porn. In 2017, Facebook found itself at the center of an intense revenge-porn scandal when members of a user-created group, Marines United, were caught sharing explicit images of female colleagues, who were then subjected to threats and harassment. Facebook eventually shut down the group, and seven marines were court-martialed in the aftermath.
Despite Moore’s conviction, revenge porn has continued to infect our cultural psyche to an alarming degree. Numerous reports have surfaced of hackers infiltrating cell phones, cloud storage sites, personal laptops and other digital spaces where people commonly store intimate photos. Female celebrities including Rihanna, Kate Upton, Miley Cyrus, Kirsten Dunst, Gabrielle Union and Jennifer Lawrence have become targets of nonconsensual pornography. Speaking to Vanity Fair about her experience, Lawrence called the data breach a “sex crime.” Male celebrities haven’t been spared either: Nick Hogan, Cheyenne Jackson and Tyler Posey have all had their personal photos leaked online.
Many people have argued that apps such as Snapchat and the Facebook-owned Instagram, both of which allow users to send and receive private images that expire after viewing, have contributed to the rise of revenge porn. In 2017, Facebook found itself at the center of an intense revenge-porn scandal when members of a user-created group, Marines United, were caught sharing explicit images of female colleagues, who were then subjected to threats and harassment. Facebook eventually shut down the group, and seven marines were court-martialed in the aftermath.
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Facebook is still struggling to keep a lid on the problem, as are other photo-hosting apps. Some have launched safeguards to flag inappropriate content for review, but flagged images can stay online for hours before moderators remove them. To combat revenge porn, Facebook recently initiated the roll-out of a pilot program in which the company asks users to upload intimate photos of themselves so its software can register them and block subsequent uploads. Users largely agree the program is a dicey solution to a massive problem.
Although our 1998 Advisor question claims that one has no legal obligation to return something received as a gift, some 40 states and the District of Columbia now have statutes against revenge porn, so keeping intimate photos of your ex, in our opinion, is riskier than it’s worth—especially since 668 data breaches occurred by mid-2018, according to Statista.
Legal risk aside, you absolutely have a moral obligation here. We should all understand why our exes would want their nude photos returned—or, in these digital times, proof they’ve been deleted. That’s because we should all have the right to express our sexuality to our romantic partners without fear of retribution. Return or destroy your ex’s nudes, and enjoy the memories. It’s the right thing to do.
Although our 1998 Advisor question claims that one has no legal obligation to return something received as a gift, some 40 states and the District of Columbia now have statutes against revenge porn, so keeping intimate photos of your ex, in our opinion, is riskier than it’s worth—especially since 668 data breaches occurred by mid-2018, according to Statista.
Legal risk aside, you absolutely have a moral obligation here. We should all understand why our exes would want their nude photos returned—or, in these digital times, proof they’ve been deleted. That’s because we should all have the right to express our sexuality to our romantic partners without fear of retribution. Return or destroy your ex’s nudes, and enjoy the memories. It’s the right thing to do.
