Humanity might be OK because two of the Snapchat Leaked sites got shut down

There have been a whole serious of websites calling themselves some version of the name “Snapchat Leaked,” and all of them have been morally disgusting. Hey, someone just sent you a salacious Snap – now you should betray their trust and put it on the Internet for everyone to see! They totally undermine the good-hearted mission of Snapchat and make the world a skeezier place. 

One of the websites of this ilk, a Nelson, New Zealand-based Facebook fan page, has recently been shut down. The page, titled “Nelson Snapchat Leaked,” got a lot of attention given how geographically-specific it was, garnering over 4,400 “likes” before it closed. Last month, Facebook shut down another larger Snapchat Leaked fan page, which accrued over 500,000 likes within days, so this more recent crackdown may indicate that Facebook is looking at the smaller Snapchat Leaked pages as well.

And it’s about time … but there are still a metric ton of Snapchat Leaked pages on Facebook. One, which is erroneously labeled as a comedian, has over 368,000 ‘likes’ (including one from a  friend of mine, who I am going to chastise). Just for comparison, the actual official Snapchat Facebook page has 422,000 likes. And while Nelson might have gotten rid of its community Snapchat Leaked page, there are still plenty of other area-specific pages up and running. Guys, why? There’s Snapchat Leaked Portsmouth, Snapchat Exposed Australia, Snapchat Leaked Norway… which, I suppose, proves that despite our difference, we are all the same amount of horrible.

We’ve had a few conversations with various Snapchat Leaked moderators, and none of them showed the slightest bit of remorse for their actions – at least at first. The person behind one of the Snapchat Leaked websites, a British web designer named Jack Landels, has now taken down the photos and put up an explanation that’s a really remarkable example of someone sending a conflicting message and only quasi-apologizing. You can read the whole thing here, but he insists that the site was never malicious and that hardly anyone on it was offended, but then goes on to say “While we have taken the moral decision to no longer post any SnapChat photo, there are still lots of other leaked websites and Facebook/Twitter copycats out there where your personal snaps are on view to the public across the world.”

It’s scary how many people are participating in the Snapchat Leaked communities all around the Internet. It’d be too hard to count, but the number is certainly well over half a million people, and it’s really too bad that this kind of fame-grubbing and/or revenge-seeking is so enthusiastically endorsed. Hopefully more people will see that their private snaps are exposed and complain, so Facebook will start shutting these pages down more frequently.