The Most Hated Man on the Internet (2022) s01e01 Episode Script
Episode 1
1
[suspenseful music playing]
[keyboard clacking]
[woman] No mother wants to see
her daughter's nude photo on the Internet.
A photo taken in private,
posted for everyone to see.
When it happened to us,
it changed our lives
forever.
[woman] It's being called revenge porn.
[man] IsAnyoneUp.
- IsAnyoneUp.
- IsAnyoneUp.
Everyone was talking about it.
Everyone was posting about it.
[man 2] A site that's fueled by
sexting pictures and Facebook information.
[man 3] The most shocking,
the most graphic, the most horrible.
You love it.
Once you're on it, it's a different story.
You had the power to ruin someone's life
with just one click.
I felt completely violated, in shock.
There were comments and comments
of people just mocking me.
"She's a whore. She's a slut."
And I wasn't worthy
of being around my children.
All my links to social media,
my phone number.
There's no hiding behind the Internet.
You were fully on display.
That site was about destroying lives.
Who would create a website like this?
[man 3] If you like the drama,
I mean, it's gonna get a lot worse.
This guy is the Internet's most hated man.
- Hunter Moore.
- Hunter Moore.
- Hunter Moore.
- Hunter Moore.
He thought of himself
as the king of revenge porn.
He didn't give a fuck
if you hated him or not.
- [man] But, so you have no empathy?
- No.
He was out of control.
This is Hunter Moore from IsAnyoneUp.com
fucking all your girlfriends.
[man 2] He had thousands of followers
willing to do his bidding.
[moans]
[woman] I had to stop him.
But I didn't know
what they were capable of.
If he feels threatened by somebody,
he won't let it go.
[electronic beeping]
I never thought it was gonna come to this.
I never thought it would go this far.
I win. I always win. That's what happens.
You're not gonna stop me.
This mother was gonna prove him wrong.
[keyboard clacking]
[upbeat music playing]
There's a reason ♪
For the sun-shining sky ♪
And there's a reason ♪
Why I'm feeling so ♪
[Charlotte] My name is Charlotte Laws.
In January 2012, I was living
in the suburbs of Los Angeles
with my husband, Charles,
a California lawyer,
and my daughter, Kayla,
who was 24 years old at the time.
It was a very happy life.
I was extremely fulfilled.
[chuckles]
I've always been really close with my mom.
I mean,
we kind of have had, like,
a sisterly relationship a lot of times.
My stepdad came into the picture
when I was maybe seven.
He's fun. He's a great guy.
And he's British. Even better. [chuckles]
[scoffs]
And let your love show ♪
[Charlotte] Kayla wanted to be an actress
and had been in college
taking acting classes.
And then she had a side job as a waitress
trying to save up money
so she could move out.
[stepdad] Life in the suburbs,
generally speaking, was a peaceful life.
Normal, quiet. You know,
we lived like millions of other people.
To and fro. To and fro.
Do nothing in LA without your motorcar,
and that was the kind of life we led.
[Charlotte] Life was fairly predictable
[phone ringing]
until one day, I'm at home
and I get a call from Kayla.
[Kayla] I was at work.
I was told there was a phone call for me,
and it was the hostess
that wasn't working that night.
[sighs]
She says, "Hey, I'm really sorry,
but you're on this website."
She said,
"It's called IsAnyoneUp.com."
It was basically a website, um,
of nude photos.
I was racking my brain, like,
"What? What photos could they have?"
"How could I be on this website?"
"I don't understand."
She says, "Look it up."
"You're on page two."
And there I was
right there, topless, nude,
um, multiple photos,
and my heart dropped.
It was embarrassing.
I never intended to show
anyone the pictures.
- So I decide to call my mom
- [line ringing]
because she's the one
that I go to right away.
[Charlotte] She was in tears.
She had, like, lots of layers of panic.
Like, "Oh my God, this is gonna destroy
everything. It's gonna destroy my life."
She told me not to tell Charles.
She was so embarrassed about it.
This is Kayla.
[Charlotte] Gives you a lot of pain,
as a mom, to feel your child in pain.
And I had to get that picture down
as quickly as possible.
[Kayla]
The type of person that I know my mom is,
is that she won't just sit on her hands.
I think right in that moment
she got to work.
[Charlotte]
I got off the phone with Kayla.
I went to my computer.
I typed in IsAnyoneUp.com,
and the website came up.
I started scrolling through
and found my daughter
and found her photos.
There were some clothed pictures
and one topless picture as well
that were posted next to her name.
It was a jolt. It was kind of shocking.
And I felt like
it just needs to be removed immediately.
Like, you know, two seconds is too long
for it to be there any longer.
I started scrolling through
the rest of the website
and seeing other women's pictures,
and it was
just everything you can imagine.
It was from very young
up to 70-year-old women.
It was people who were 300 pounds.
It was people who were incapacitated.
You know, a blind paraplegic was on there.
Under the photos,
people were allowed to leave comments.
They'd be called whores, fat cows,
creature with nasty teeth,
slut, you know, just hate-filled comments.
It was very clear that site was about
humiliating people as much as possible.
I was thinking,
"Who would create a website like this?"
But he was plastered all over the site.
It was very clear that the man
who owned that website and ran that site
[camera clicks]
was Hunter Moore.
[cheering]
[camera clicks]
[keyboard clacking]
[camera clicking]
[keyboard clacking]
[camera clicking]
[keyboard clacking]
[camera clicks]
[keyboard clacking]
[computer dings]
[Charlotte] This was not someone
hiding in the shadows.
This was not someone
who wanted to be anonymous.
This was someone who was enjoying being
"Internet famous"
is what I guess people call it.
Why are you in love with me?
- Because you're hard to get.
- Ooh.
[Hunter] Did you come here tonight
to find your significant other?
Hell no.
- Did you come to have a one-night stand?
- [woman] Yes!
[Hunter laughs]
This is Hunter Moore from IsAnyoneUp.com
fucking all your girlfriends.
[Charlotte] You know, I felt like
I needed to find out who this guy was
and how he could feel comfortable
harming people in this way.
[electronic music playing]
I'm Kirra Hughes,
and I was Hunter Moore's girlfriend.
[chuckles]
I was 18 years old when I moved
to San Francisco for fashion design.
I had one friend
who wanted to bring me out, celebrate,
to a party
that Hunter Moore was throwing.
As we were leaving,
Hunter grabbed me by the shoulder
and said,
"You don't wanna go out there."
It was such, like,
a paused moment in time.
Even though it happened
for, like, five seconds,
it seemed a lot longer.
There was an immediate attraction.
I think he asked me
to be his girlfriend the next day.
I would say Hunter was ambitious,
but he is extremely impatient.
I feel like I could see his mind,
like, constructing all these things
in his head.
One day, he tells me about a website
he set up called IsAnyoneUp.
Well, it all started with, um, you know,
me hating some dumb bitch who
broke my heart, really.
And that's how it started, dude.
Me and my friends would post
a bunch of girls on IsAnyoneUp.
And, uh, we just got a bunch of traffic
one day, and I was like,
"Yo, I can make money off titties
and fucking people over."
I just thought it was bizarre.
I just never fully grasped
what was going on.
But then he started posting nude photos
of popular bands, popular scene bands,
which grabbed a lot more attention.
The site went from 0 to 100 overnight.
[rock music playing]
[metalcore music playing]
[man] I was a vocalist
for a scene band called We Are Defiance.
We were based in Central Florida.
The music was very aggressive
and had lots of screaming.
And, you know, that was my job was to,
you know, scream into a mic for a living.
My intuition tells me ♪
Something ain't right ♪
Ah! ♪
[man] Scene was a subculture.
This was definitely the primordial ooze
from which Hunter Moore came out of.
We had the brooding energy of the emos,
the "fuck you" attitude of the punks.
It was all about the tight jeans,
tight T-shirt,
as many tattoos as you could get,
and the big hair.
[hardcore music playing]
[Twitter tweets]
The whole experience was wild.
Girls, partying, drugs.
[man] Oh my God! Oh my gosh!
[Brian] IsAnyoneUp took off at a time
where smartphones first appeared.
And the Sidekick was a smartphone
that everyone on the scene was using.
What do you do with a phone
with a camera?
Take pictures of your dick
and send it to people on social media.
[chuckles]
It was a common thing
for people to send dick pics,
or, you know, girls to send pictures
of their boobs to people.
It was a way of flirting.
But at that point in time, the Internet
just felt like this kind of fun festival.
Hunter Moore, he showed the world
that the Internet is fucking permanent.
And it has the power to ruin your life.
[Hunter] I'm a scene kid at heart,
so if you like to view boobs and penises
of your favorite bands or whatever,
I mean, it's gonna get a lot worse.
[Brian]
IsAnyoneUp was a super shocking thing.
Everyone was talking about it.
Everyone was posting about it.
It was, like, viral in our scene
before viral was viral.
[man] My favorite thing
is "No Butthole No Care."
Where'd you come up with that?
[Hunter] I was hella pissed 'cause, like,
girls were just sending me titty shots,
and I was like,
"Where the fuck is your asshole?"
I just put "No Butthole No Care"
on a post, and it just fucking took off.
[Brian] Hunter was very much,
like, controlling the drama.
He was the, you know, ringleader.
"Are we gonna make fun of this person
or are we gonna praise them
for these pictures?"
And that would just snowball.
It was the Wild West days of the Internet
before rules and regulations came in.
You could just unleash this vile
on people that you didn't even know,
and there would be no repercussions.
But what really made
IsAnyoneUp a unique beast was the way
that Hunter Moore would purposefully
connect your social media accounts
to the photos
that were being submitted of you.
People could easily access you.
They could look at your naked picture
and then also go find your Facebook.
There is no hiding behind the Internet.
You were fully on display.
[Hunter] I mean, you can post pictures,
you know, of random boobs
and penises all day,
but just adding that social network to it
just puts it to a whole nother level.
[keyboard clacking]
[Charlotte]
Kayla's social media had been posted
on the IsAnyoneUp site
along with her photos.
And because her Twitter page
was listed, and also her name,
people knew how to get in touch
with her on other social media.
Very quickly got
over 1,000 extra followers
because of those pictures.
[computer chimes]
- Lots of guys reaching out to me
- [computer chimes]
talking about my body sexually.
- [computer chimes]
- And I just wanted to
delete everything, block everything,
get rid of everything so that I didn't
receive any more attention.
Kayla shut down her social media.
[phone buzzing]
But then she started getting phone calls.
She got calls from random men.
I was curled in a ball in bed, not moving,
upset, crying,
completely helpless.
I felt just
really violated.
Kayla and Charlotte
were acting very strangely,
whispering in the corner,
shutting themselves in rooms.
One's imagination runs wild.
What could it be?
Pregnancy? Drugs? Crime?
So I did ask, of course, after a while.
I asked Charlotte what was going on,
and she declined to tell me.
And I think he knew
he was being kept out of the loop,
but it was important
to Kayla that he not be told.
I asked her
how the picture had gotten on the site,
and she said that she had taken it
in the privacy of her room,
but she had never sent the picture
to anyone, and I believed her.
I was having some fun
in my bedroom
just taking some pictures,
in the mirror, of myself.
And I decided to take some topless photos.
What's so wrong with wanting
to take a photo of yourself
in the privacy of your own home
and saving it for yourself?
My cell phone ran out of space,
so I sent the photos to
my email address.
[phone clicking]
So I'm sitting there trying to figure out
how my photos ended up on this website.
[Charlotte]
Kayla told me that a week earlier,
she had been locked out
of her social media, out of her email.
She had to reset passwords in order to
get access to some of her accounts again.
I was freaking out.
Someone was taking over my account.
So I drew the conclusion that
her accounts had been hacked.
The person who locked her out
of her accounts must have been
the person who posted
this topless picture onto this website.
I felt
that I didn't really have any privacy,
and that's even more mortifying.
You know, I just tried to tell her that
I was gonna help her get the picture down.
Hunter's website claimed that you could
send a request for content to be removed
and he would remove it.
Well, hopefully, we just have to send
a letter, just send him an email,
per the website, and he'll just remove it.
That's what I was hoping.
When I sent the email,
it came from Kayla. We wrote it together.
And she made a plea to him
to take it down.
I told him that
the photos had been hacked.
And I never wanted them
on the website in the first place.
[Charlotte] We told him that
the picture was copyrighted,
'cause whoever takes a picture
of themself owns that copyright.
[Kayla] I felt like I could somehow
appeal to his human side
and express to him how this
was really making me feel emotionally.
He sent back an email asking about
the hacking, saying he wanted proof of it.
And so we were able to send that to him,
and then it was crickets.
We never heard another word from him.
[Kayla] He just didn't care
and pretty much just
shut the door in my face, basically.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Brian] Every day, you wake up,
you're checking IsAnyoneUp.
You're enthralled by it.
You love it,
and once you're on it, different story.
I'm home from tour.
I go out with my friends for some drinks.
You know, we're talking about the website.
You know, I leave my phone at the bar.
I go to the bathroom.
I come back, and my friend, she's like,
"Hey, I submitted you to the website."
I'm like, "Are you serious?
Are you kidding me?"
She took photos off my phone
and sent them in to the site,
thinking it'd be a joke
that could be funny.
The picture was just a picture of me,
you know, holding my penis.
I mean, I was talking to a girl.
We're flirting, and a picture was taken,
sent to her, you know, just for her.
The submission form was incredibly simple.
It was anonymous,
which takes away any sense
of responsibility
or repercussions for doing it.
You had the power to ruin someone's life
with just one click.
[click]
I wake up in the morning, and my phone
is flooded with notifications.
[phone chiming and buzzing]
I'm like, "Shit."
Yeah, I got posted on the site.
Having pictures of yourself
naked on the Internet
just gives you anxiety,
'cause you have no control.
So I called Hunter, and I was like,
"Hey, can you take my post down?"
And he's like, "It's nothing against you,
nothing personal. It's just business."
Hunter was, like,
the first, like, Internet troll.
I think he liked the power
he had over people.
He was extremely talented
at getting people's attention.
Now he's doing interviews
with, like, mainstream media companies.
[man] Hunter Moore
is a 26-year-old web renegade,
and his website IsAnyoneUp
was designed for public humiliation
on a scale only the Internet can offer.
[Hunter] It's, um, where
revengeful exes
come for a peace of mind.
[man] He calls it revenge porn.
[Brian] The website stopped
being about kind of band people.
You started to see, like,
moms or wives or nurses or doctors.
The silliness and the fun of it,
it was long gone.
It became purely
for revenge and exploitation.
[suspenseful music playing]
[keyboard clacking]
[Charlotte] I didn't think
that what Hunter was doing was legal.
He actually posted information
of who his attorney was.
- And so I called his attorney.
- [line ringing]
My name is Reza Sina, and I used to be
Hunter Moore's personal lawyer.
Out of nowhere in January 2012,
I start getting direct emails
and phone calls from people saying,
"Hey, my picture is on the site,
and it shouldn't be on this site."
"It must be taken down."
I definitely got the sense
that he just didn't take me seriously,
and he was just kind of
not really going to end up helping.
[Reza]
Charlotte Laws was mad and pissed off.
But according to the law,
what Hunter was doing was not illegal.
Section 230
of the Communications Decency Act
basically says that website owners
are not generally responsible
for the content on their website
if it's user submitted.
All he's doing is providing a forum
for people to put it up.
"I'm just providing a platform.
It isn't me, folks."
"It's other people
who are coming to my site."
"They're the bad guys.
Not me. Don't blame me."
[man] And as for the guy responsible
for IsAnyoneUp, Hunter Moore,
well, Forbes reports that Moore made
$13,000 a month off the site.
Hunter had two revenue streams.
Selling merchandise
and selling advertising.
The more users you have on a website,
the more hits you have on a website,
the more you can charge for advertising.
So, you see, the problem is
if Hunter keeps taking down pictures,
then he's gonna get less users.
It's against his business model.
[man] Do you consider yourself
a scumbag or just an outlet?
'Cause, let's be honest, man,
people hate you.
[Hunter] You're sending these pictures
to some cute boy
you probably met on the Internet.
And then they submit 'em to me.
I don't know why all these people hate me.
I'm just the one putting it out there
and making money off your penis.
- [man] Oh my God, awesome.
- [Hunter] But, yeah.
[man laughs]
Most people seemed to think it was cool.
"Oh, look at this bad boy who's come up
with a new way to make money."
For me and Kayla,
it was just overwhelming.
You couldn't do anything to stop him.
He thought of himself
as the king of revenge porn.
[people cheering]
[man] I got a question for you.
Who came to see Hunter Moore?
[crowd cheering]
[woman] Fuck you, Hunter!
Hey, just chill out, sweetheart.
I'll get you pregnant later. Listen
[cheering]
[Mike] He was really trying to build
this brand of the Internet bad boy.
He didn't give a fuck
if you hated him or not.
You were still fueling
this project of his.
[woman]
So what's your vision with your career
now that you have established
IsAnyoneUp.com?
I mean, I'm going to be literally
the white P. Diddy, honestly.
I'm gonna be worth $100 million
by the time I'm 30. I already know that.
Like,
I'm literally gonna take over the world.
[Mike] The website was so popular,
it was getting
something along the lines of
350,000 unique views a day.
And Internet traffic
has inflated, uh, tenfold.
So if IsAnyoneUp was happening in 2021,
that 350,000 unique visitors a day
would be 3.5 million.
[keyboard clacking]
As much as I hate to say it,
I think that Hunter tapped into something
that's deep inside us.
He made it appear
that you would be very successful
by being a complete sociopath
on the Internet.
[keyboard clacking]
[Charlotte] I was checking the website,
and I came upon one of Kayla's friends.
And so I called this girl.
And she was just completely freaked out
about being on the site.
She said that the photos
had been stolen out of a private email.
Which kind of made me go,
"Oh, well, that's really weird,
because I only know
two people who are on that website,
and they were both hacked."
She said that,
"You better not try to go against
Hunter Moore. He's a dangerous guy."
She had great fear
of being on Hunter's radar.
[clicking]
[Hunter] If you try to sue me,
I'll make fuckin' fun of you.
You come to my house and serve me,
I'll put your address out there,
and my audience loves that shit.
[Charlotte] I was not about to be
intimidated or deterred.
The hacking was a huge deal,
but I'd need more evidence to prove it.
I had to focus on getting
Kayla's photo down as quickly as possible.
I called Hunter's publicist, his agent,
some of his advertisers.
I was trying to kind of get
as much pressure on him
from as many different directions
as possible.
I was completely traumatized.
And all I could hear outside my door
in the hallway was my mom talking.
She was going in all avenues,
any which way that she could,
to get my photos down
as quick as possible.
[Charlotte] I even called the office
where his mom worked.
And that got back to him
because Hunter posted something
on his Twitter feed about how someone
had called his mom's workplace.
I didn't get any positive feedback
from any of these phone calls.
Nobody had any interest
in assisting in any way.
Then one day, there was this email
from an anonymous individual.
I don't know who it was, and it said,
"Back off, bitch, or else."
Signed "the Family."
It was really quite shocking,
and I thought to myself,
"What on earth is the Family?"
I'm about to go knock out
the biggest guy I can find.
The Family, it was his cult following.
They're all calling Hunter "Father."
They're all, you know,
kind of mindlessly following him
and, you know, doing whatever he says.
They would create new content
for Hunter to post.
[woman] Princess toothbrush. Gotta have.
Dude, I'm crying.
[woman] Just let it be in my pee.
A little
Yo, that's the same girl
that brushed her teeth with shit.
Nasty bitch.
[Brian] You know, a girl brushed her teeth
after washing it in the toilet.
No! No. No.
People were just going through
crazy lengths to get his attention.
Fuck you, Hunter Moore.
[hooting] Oh, my car!
[Hunter] The Internet,
it all comes down to numbers.
You know, how many followers you have,
how many likes you have on Facebook.
[girls] Hi! We miss you!
[Hunter]
The more you have, the more people
are gonna think
you're cool and interesting.
[farts]
[Hunter]
So when you get posted on a site like mine
with so much traffic
and so much attention,
your numbers are gonna skyrocket.
It's, like, 15 minutes of Internet fame.
[man huffing]
Oh shit!
There's no doubt that Hunter Moore
was a master of manipulation,
and I think
the most extreme example of that
was Butthole Girl.
[woman] I'm gonna step out of the way.
Scene one, take one and B.
Can you stop?
Count mark.
My name is Destiny Benedict,
and I'm known as Butthole Girl
on IsAnyoneUp.
Hunter was, like, very compelling.
Like, I wanted to be accepted by him
and, like, noticed,
and he had this way about him
of getting people to do
whatever he wanted them to do.
I was 19 years old.
I wanted to get out of my mother's house
and kind of be more on my own
and self-sufficient.
One of my friends told me,
"Hey, you should try webcamming.
You know, you'd be perfect for this."
People tip you money to see your boobs.
Just sitting in front of a camera,
I could make enough to pay my own rent
and be able to provide for my children.
I got a message
from a friend saying, like,
"Hey, you know,
you're pretty open sexually."
"Like, you should check out this site.
Like, it's called IsAnyoneUp."
I just couldn't stop looking at it.
And I felt like being posted
on IsAnyoneUp, it would attract people
to my webcam sites.
And if you're famous,
with fame comes money.
So I sent my nudes.
I wanted to be selling myself
as this, like, beautiful, amazing woman,
this fantasy girl, and everybody is like,
"Did you see that new hot girl
posted on IsAnyoneUp?"
But not long after that,
I was in a webcam chat
with a couple of my friends,
and they had dared me
to basically put
a mousse bottle in my butt.
One of the people in the chat room
took the screenshot
and submitted it to IsAnyoneUp.
I wanted to be a hot girl on the site.
And then it just became,
you know, me with a mousse bottle
in my butt instead.
[all] Oh!
[laughs] Ew.
[Destiny] Not only that, but a screenshot
of my Facebook was above it
with my children in the cover photo.
I feel kind of, like, stupid.
And I obviously knew
they posted Facebook pictures.
So why didn't I think to take
my kids off my cover photo
if I was submitting nudes?
I didn't think of that.
I didn't think about it back then.
The Internet can be a really cruel place.
Hunter was not willing to take
the screenshot of my kids off of there.
The only thing that would work,
I felt, was if I offered
to take more pictures
of things in my butt.
I mean
that's what drew everybody in.
The one that he suggested
was a cell phone.
He wanted me
to put the cell phone in my butt,
and then he would call it,
and it would vibrate.
Um, he thought that would be really funny.
So I took the photo,
and that's how Butthole Girl was born.
[Mike]
Butthole Girl was an Internet phenomenon.
And she became
definitely the most famous person
from this website after Hunter Moore.
Hunter replaced the cover photo
as soon as those pictures went out.
I had a lot of attention.
A lot of people were tweeting about it.
I had people like Jeffree Star saying,
"That's what I call a real booty call."
I had never imagined myself being famous
for putting things in my butt.
You know, I wanted
more than that.
[keyboard clacking]
[Charlotte] I was getting
death threats from the Family,
and I realized
I wasn't just taking on Hunter Moore.
I was taking on thousands of his minions.
It was really scary
because everyone just worshiped him
like he was a king, like he was a god.
He had a lot of people saying,
"I will do anything for you, Father."
"I will kill for you."
I had no idea how they would retaliate
against me and my family.
So I went
to Los Angeles Police Department.
And Kayla went with me.
And I went up to the counter
and talked to a female detective
and told her the situation
and that Kayla had been hacked
and that her picture was on this website.
She looked over at Kayla and said,
"Why would you take a picture like this
if you didn't want it on the Internet?"
[Kayla]
She was blaming me for taking the photo.
It was so uncomfortable.
And I just wanted to
run away.
I told the detective,
"If Kayla had taken the photo
in her room and put it in a dresser drawer
and someone had broken in and stolen it,
would you be telling her
that she shouldn't have taken the picture
or would you be investigating the theft?"
The detective, she seemed annoyed by that.
I didn't think they
were really gonna investigate anything.
[rock music playing]
Yeah, should you do time
for sharing pics online?
If I'm dumb enough to send a naked photo
of myself to a boyfriend, to a lover,
to whatever, and they decide
out of vengeance five years later
when I'm mean to them to post it
somewhere, that's actually my problem.
Everybody said, "It's the victims' fault."
"Don't take a picture
if you don't want it on the Internet."
All of that was circulating.
Really, nobody was on the victims' side
- [mouse clicks]
- while Hunter was destroying lives.
So my children's fathers
basically decided that
since I was affiliated with IsAnyoneUp
and since I was doing porn now,
that it would be in the best interest
to keep me out of the children's lives.
The whole point of being Butthole Girl was
to get my children's photos
off of IsAnyoneUp.
But they just decided
that I was just this abomination
and that I wasn't worthy
of being around my children.
My children were my whole world.
I kind of got down and depressed
and started drinking here and there.
And I had been, like, posting online
that I was, like, drunk,
and having a good time,
or making it seem like it, rather.
That's what you do on social media, right?
[chuckles]
It had caught the attention of Hunter,
and I remember him messaging me
that we should get on Skype.
Even though I felt like he was
destroying my reputation, destroying,
you know, my life,
I
still wanted his attention.
He had promised to help me
set up a website
for me to get my porn more out there,
and I could make enough money
to get my kids back in my life.
["Bad Things" playing]
Yeah, big dreams, baby
Yeah, we have big dreams ♪
[Destiny] He really wanted me
to put my fist in my butt,
but I wasn't entirely comfortable
with the idea of that.
- Yeah, we have big dreams ♪
- Yeah ♪
And we're gonna make you
Do bad things ♪
[Destiny] And he's like,
"This is how you get famous, you know."
"This is what you gotta do
if you want your own site."
"Gotta be Butthole Girl.
Get that famous butthole out."
I was drunk, and I was willing to,
you know, be, like, "Okay, whatever."
We don't do ♪
Hunter just kept saying, like, you know,
"Put your fist in your ass." And
And I
I I just kind of, you know,
caved in and did it.
I wasn't proud of it.
You say I'm bad
Like it's a bad thing ♪
You say I'm bad
Like it's a bad thing ♪
You say I'm bad ♪
I didn't even know
that he was screen recording
the conversation,
and if I did,
then I was in a state of mind where
if I agreed, I probably
wasn't actually agreeing. [chuckles]
[mouse clicks]
[Destiny]
I actually don't know if he sold it.
But it didn't end up on IsAnyoneUp.
It ended up
on a different website entirely.
I just remember checking the video
and seeing it climb up and up and up.
And it went from, like,
thousands to a million.
That's when I stopped checking,
'cause then I was like,
"It's already hit a million, you know."
[keyboard clacking]
It's just incredibly awful
to not be able to control
the things that are being put out.
It's a representation of me
in my most vulnerable state.
I never got a dime.
I never got any money
from Hunter Moore, like, ever. [chuckles]
But he did offer to give me a T-shirt.
[suspenseful music playing]
[keyboard clacking]
[Charlotte] We were very concerned
that Kayla's picture would be circulated
to other websites.
And the longer a picture stays online,
the better chance that could happen.
It becomes virtually impossible
to get down.
If Los Angeles police wouldn't listen,
I knew I'd have to go above their heads
and contact the FBI.
Hunter Moore loved saying
that he wasn't doing anything illegal,
and I knew hacking was illegal,
so if he was involved in a hacking scheme,
boy, I knew
he was gonna be in big trouble,
and I was gonna be able
to totally nail him.
So I called and told them the story.
I was determined
to get them to take it seriously.
They took the information
and said that three agents
would be coming to my house
later in the month.
But they weren't giving me
the immediate solution that I needed.
The clock was ticking.
It was time to ask Charles for help.
Charles was an attorney, and even though
Kayla did not want me to tell him,
I felt like we had a much better chance
of getting the photo down
if he was on board.
[Charles] My first reaction
when Charlotte told me Kayla's picture
had been put up on this website,
I was extremely surprised.
You know, I was a middle-aged man
before I ever set foot on a computer,
before the Internet showed up.
It was completely new
that this sort of thing went on at all.
I thought the best way to deal
with the photo was to do nothing about it.
You give it attention and it gets worse.
Charles just said, "Don't worry about it.
Just move on. Leave it up there."
"People will forget about it anyway."
And Kayla got very upset, jumped up.
"I knew we shouldn't have told him!"
And she just kind of goes rampaging
up to her room, like, in tears.
I was honestly really, really shocked.
I didn't want my photo
just staying out there.
I said to Charles,
"You know, you don't go on the Internet."
"You know nothing about the Internet.
And pictures do not disappear."
"Nude pictures are gonna proliferate."
"It's gonna get worse over time,
not better."
I don't know if Charlotte resented
the fact that I wasn't helping.
And in fact, I was helping to a degree.
I was offering a solution
that she found unacceptable,
because I thought I couldn't imagine
who would look at a website like that.
He just said,
"I don't wanna get involved."
And he walked into the living room
and sat in his chair.
I couldn't rely on Charles.
I knew I had to keep pushing,
keep persevering,
and get the picture down myself.
In order to be able to present
the case to the FBI,
I thought it was very important
to reach out to victims
and find out how they got on the site.
I needed to prove that Hunter was hacking.
I would see people posted on the website,
and I would find out information
based on that posting.
The women I talked to,
and some of the men, too, as well,
were really emotionally destroyed by this.
There was a teacher from Kansas
who, um, Hunter had said,
"Should I post this teacher?
Do you think she'll lose her job?"
And all of his followers were like,
"Yeah, post her! Post her!"
And then, bam, her pictures were up.
The next morning, the principal actually
marched into her classroom and said,
"Get your things together and go home."
And she goes, "Why?"
"Get your things together and go home."
I called her,
and I'm the first one who told her she was
on the site, and she was just devastated.
Then later she calls me back
with her boyfriend
and says, "I don't know what to do."
"We don't have any money for a lawyer.
We don't have anybody to talk to."
"I'm gonna lose my job."
She was so devastated. [sniffles]
So it was really hard
talking to these people.
There were a lot of stories like this.
Hunter Moore was willing to post anything.
The more it would impact somebody
in a negative way,
the more it would destroy their life,
the better from his perspective.
That's what he wanted.
This doesn't just stay online.
This can drive you to kill yourself.
[computer tweets]
[woman] March 2011, I would say,
is where I can,
like, look at the calendar in my brain
and point to the day everything changed.
I was young. I was, like, 22.
I had, like, this great apartment
in downtown Buffalo.
I was training to be a nurse,
and I loved it. I was happy in my life.
[mouse clicks]
[phone clicking]
I woke up
like any other day.
And, you know, you wake up,
you look at your phone and
200 notifications?
How? Why?
I'm going through the messages,
and it's my name
and then a link to a website
that I had never heard of.
[computer chimes]
[Cara] When I went to the actual website,
it was naked girls,
and then I saw myself.
It was two pictures.
One, I had, like, a bra on,
and one I was topless.
Now I'm embarrassed
and ashamed and mad.
The comments were just,
like, demeaning, like, degrading.
How I had one boob bigger than the other,
or, like, my nose was weird.
What was worse
was it was all my information.
My first and last name
and my address,
all my links to social media,
my phone number.
It felt dangerous.
I did not send
that topless photo to anybody,
which just left me wondering
how the hell it got onto the Internet.
It feels like you're getting walked in on
when you're doing something private.
It's unnerving.
I reached out to Hunter multiple times
on multiple platforms.
[keyboard clacking]
[computer chimes]
[keyboard clacking]
[computer chimes]
I asked what did I have to do for him
to make it go away.
[keyboard clacking]
[computer chimes]
I never found out
because there was never a response.
I wasn't sleeping.
It was all I could think about.
It was all my energy could go towards,
and it was just draining me of
my self-esteem and my self-worth
and, like,
making me question my ability.
"Do I deserve the job I have?"
"Do I deserve the life I have?"
You know, it very quickly spiraled for me.
He didn't want self-submits.
He didn't want people who said,
"Here, Hunter, post my picture."
No. That wasn't interesting.
That wasn't gonna get page views.
That's not what the site was about.
He wanted people
who did not wanna be there,
who could not afford to be on that site.
He wanted total and complete
humiliation of these individuals.
[man] Has there been any individual victim
who you've just felt sorry for
to the point that you were moved to
take something down,
and, oh, I don't know,
apologize?
[Hunter]
I felt really bad about a lot of things.
I've had points where I felt so bad,
I've, uh, wanted to stop the site,
to be honest with you.
[man] And what stopped you from stopping?
[Hunter] Um
It's just too much fun.
I started punishing myself
with food, or the lack thereof,
where I would binge and purge.
I felt, like, just so worthless
and so out of control that that was
that was what I can control.
I went to the pharmacy,
and refilled my prescriptions,
two of which were controlled substances,
and I got back to my apartment.
And
I just said, "Fuck it."
I took a sip of my drink,
and I drank the entire first bottle
of controlled substances.
And then I remember just being like,
"Okay, here we go."
And I took the other bottle.
And I got into my bathtub,
um, and had barricaded the door.
What had actually woken my roommate up
was my cat outside the bathroom door,
like, losing her mind.
I, um, was sent to the ICU.
And I was in a coma
for several several days.
I don't think that I would have ever
attempted to take my own life
had that moment of being posted
never occurred.
That is the catalyst
that mentally snapped
something in my brain.
A short while after I had finally
gotten home from the hospital,
a woman named Charlotte Laws
reached out to me.
And she told me she was looking to pursue
some sort of legal action against Hunter
and would I mind sharing some of my story.
I spoke to Cara. She was wounded.
She was completely devastated
over having her nude picture online.
It just made me more determined
to try and help all the victims
get their pictures down.
She really inspired
that little bit of hope that
I think I'd been hopeless for so long,
I was very grateful to have that support,
because there was the other end
of the Internet who was like,
"Yay, Hunter, you're doing amazing!"
It's just like,
"No, you're doing so much damage."
[suspenseful music playing]
[keyboard clacking]
[Charles] So Charlotte
was carrying on her own battle.
And then one day,
when I came home from work,
there was a fax on the fax machine.
[machine whirring]
[Charles]
It was for Charlotte, but I read it.
Here's what it says. Hard to believe.
"Hey, ugly bitch, get off Hunter's dick."
"If you don't, we'll rape you
and put a shotgun
down your throat."
Well, that was what it said.
I thought,
"Okay, that's really"
"That's That's the case, isn't it?
That's a case for war."
And I realized at that moment
that I had been slow to act,
and it was time for me
to take action as an attorney
without any further delay.
I picked up the phone,
and I called Hunter Moore's attorney.
[line ringing]
And I told him copyright law is clear.
The photo belonged to Kayla.
The photograph had been stolen,
so it was clearly theft.
And I told him
it would cost his client huge fees,
whereas my client,
who was my stepdaughter,
had a free lawyer. [chuckles]
That was her piece of good fortune.
I said,
"This is a good deal for your client."
"All he has to do is remove one picture
from his site."
"And if he doesn't, I will file action,
and it will cost him thousands."
"You know that. I know that.
And you've got 30 minutes to get it done."
I remember Charles.
This guy was seriously pissed off.
And I said, "Look, ultimatums
aren't gonna work well with Hunter."
"They don't fly well with him,
but let me give him a call
and see what I could do
to have it taken down."
After I got off the phone with Charles,
I immediately called Hunter.
I was pissed. I was pissed off that
I'm still cleaning up Hunter's messes.
I told him he should
take down the picture right away.
Charles was adamant
that someone hacked Kayla's email.
Being told from a lawyer-to-lawyer
standpoint, you take him more seriously.
After the incident with Kayla Laws,
I took every step
to remove myself formally
from any activity with Hunter Moore.
Kayla and I, uh, went in the other room,
and we watched the clock
and watched the clock.
[clock ticking]
And we just keep refreshing it
and refreshing it and refreshing it.
[Charlotte] We were very nervous.
Hoping and praying
that it was gonna come down.
And then after 30 minutes,
we looked on the site.
[suspenseful music playing]
Finally.
Finally, it's removed.
I feel this
just big wave of relief over me.
[calming music playing]
[Charles] Charlotte came in and said,
"It's done. It's down."
Well, I felt very well satisfied
and very pleased
and very happy on Kayla's behalf.
As far as Kayla was concerned,
that was the end of the matter.
She wanted life
to go straight back to normal.
She didn't wanna think about it again.
And I was of the same mind.
But Charlotte could not let it go.
Charles said, "Okay. It's time to stop."
Kayla wanted me to stop as well.
But I had no intention of stopping.
[suspenseful music playing]
There's no way I'm just gonna abandon
all of these women I said I would help.
I mean, I'm just not gonna do that.
You wanna fuck with me?
I'mma fuck with you.
That's what I do.
Hunter was continuing to destroy lives.
[Hunter] I'm a badass fucking dude.
I had to fight
to take down his website completely,
to get him off the Internet.
But if I was going to war
against Hunter Moore,
I'd need some allies to bring him down.
[suspenseful music playing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[keyboard clacking]
[woman] No mother wants to see
her daughter's nude photo on the Internet.
A photo taken in private,
posted for everyone to see.
When it happened to us,
it changed our lives
forever.
[woman] It's being called revenge porn.
[man] IsAnyoneUp.
- IsAnyoneUp.
- IsAnyoneUp.
Everyone was talking about it.
Everyone was posting about it.
[man 2] A site that's fueled by
sexting pictures and Facebook information.
[man 3] The most shocking,
the most graphic, the most horrible.
You love it.
Once you're on it, it's a different story.
You had the power to ruin someone's life
with just one click.
I felt completely violated, in shock.
There were comments and comments
of people just mocking me.
"She's a whore. She's a slut."
And I wasn't worthy
of being around my children.
All my links to social media,
my phone number.
There's no hiding behind the Internet.
You were fully on display.
That site was about destroying lives.
Who would create a website like this?
[man 3] If you like the drama,
I mean, it's gonna get a lot worse.
This guy is the Internet's most hated man.
- Hunter Moore.
- Hunter Moore.
- Hunter Moore.
- Hunter Moore.
He thought of himself
as the king of revenge porn.
He didn't give a fuck
if you hated him or not.
- [man] But, so you have no empathy?
- No.
He was out of control.
This is Hunter Moore from IsAnyoneUp.com
fucking all your girlfriends.
[man 2] He had thousands of followers
willing to do his bidding.
[moans]
[woman] I had to stop him.
But I didn't know
what they were capable of.
If he feels threatened by somebody,
he won't let it go.
[electronic beeping]
I never thought it was gonna come to this.
I never thought it would go this far.
I win. I always win. That's what happens.
You're not gonna stop me.
This mother was gonna prove him wrong.
[keyboard clacking]
[upbeat music playing]
There's a reason ♪
For the sun-shining sky ♪
And there's a reason ♪
Why I'm feeling so ♪
[Charlotte] My name is Charlotte Laws.
In January 2012, I was living
in the suburbs of Los Angeles
with my husband, Charles,
a California lawyer,
and my daughter, Kayla,
who was 24 years old at the time.
It was a very happy life.
I was extremely fulfilled.
[chuckles]
I've always been really close with my mom.
I mean,
we kind of have had, like,
a sisterly relationship a lot of times.
My stepdad came into the picture
when I was maybe seven.
He's fun. He's a great guy.
And he's British. Even better. [chuckles]
[scoffs]
And let your love show ♪
[Charlotte] Kayla wanted to be an actress
and had been in college
taking acting classes.
And then she had a side job as a waitress
trying to save up money
so she could move out.
[stepdad] Life in the suburbs,
generally speaking, was a peaceful life.
Normal, quiet. You know,
we lived like millions of other people.
To and fro. To and fro.
Do nothing in LA without your motorcar,
and that was the kind of life we led.
[Charlotte] Life was fairly predictable
[phone ringing]
until one day, I'm at home
and I get a call from Kayla.
[Kayla] I was at work.
I was told there was a phone call for me,
and it was the hostess
that wasn't working that night.
[sighs]
She says, "Hey, I'm really sorry,
but you're on this website."
She said,
"It's called IsAnyoneUp.com."
It was basically a website, um,
of nude photos.
I was racking my brain, like,
"What? What photos could they have?"
"How could I be on this website?"
"I don't understand."
She says, "Look it up."
"You're on page two."
And there I was
right there, topless, nude,
um, multiple photos,
and my heart dropped.
It was embarrassing.
I never intended to show
anyone the pictures.
- So I decide to call my mom
- [line ringing]
because she's the one
that I go to right away.
[Charlotte] She was in tears.
She had, like, lots of layers of panic.
Like, "Oh my God, this is gonna destroy
everything. It's gonna destroy my life."
She told me not to tell Charles.
She was so embarrassed about it.
This is Kayla.
[Charlotte] Gives you a lot of pain,
as a mom, to feel your child in pain.
And I had to get that picture down
as quickly as possible.
[Kayla]
The type of person that I know my mom is,
is that she won't just sit on her hands.
I think right in that moment
she got to work.
[Charlotte]
I got off the phone with Kayla.
I went to my computer.
I typed in IsAnyoneUp.com,
and the website came up.
I started scrolling through
and found my daughter
and found her photos.
There were some clothed pictures
and one topless picture as well
that were posted next to her name.
It was a jolt. It was kind of shocking.
And I felt like
it just needs to be removed immediately.
Like, you know, two seconds is too long
for it to be there any longer.
I started scrolling through
the rest of the website
and seeing other women's pictures,
and it was
just everything you can imagine.
It was from very young
up to 70-year-old women.
It was people who were 300 pounds.
It was people who were incapacitated.
You know, a blind paraplegic was on there.
Under the photos,
people were allowed to leave comments.
They'd be called whores, fat cows,
creature with nasty teeth,
slut, you know, just hate-filled comments.
It was very clear that site was about
humiliating people as much as possible.
I was thinking,
"Who would create a website like this?"
But he was plastered all over the site.
It was very clear that the man
who owned that website and ran that site
[camera clicks]
was Hunter Moore.
[cheering]
[camera clicks]
[keyboard clacking]
[camera clicking]
[keyboard clacking]
[camera clicking]
[keyboard clacking]
[camera clicks]
[keyboard clacking]
[computer dings]
[Charlotte] This was not someone
hiding in the shadows.
This was not someone
who wanted to be anonymous.
This was someone who was enjoying being
"Internet famous"
is what I guess people call it.
Why are you in love with me?
- Because you're hard to get.
- Ooh.
[Hunter] Did you come here tonight
to find your significant other?
Hell no.
- Did you come to have a one-night stand?
- [woman] Yes!
[Hunter laughs]
This is Hunter Moore from IsAnyoneUp.com
fucking all your girlfriends.
[Charlotte] You know, I felt like
I needed to find out who this guy was
and how he could feel comfortable
harming people in this way.
[electronic music playing]
I'm Kirra Hughes,
and I was Hunter Moore's girlfriend.
[chuckles]
I was 18 years old when I moved
to San Francisco for fashion design.
I had one friend
who wanted to bring me out, celebrate,
to a party
that Hunter Moore was throwing.
As we were leaving,
Hunter grabbed me by the shoulder
and said,
"You don't wanna go out there."
It was such, like,
a paused moment in time.
Even though it happened
for, like, five seconds,
it seemed a lot longer.
There was an immediate attraction.
I think he asked me
to be his girlfriend the next day.
I would say Hunter was ambitious,
but he is extremely impatient.
I feel like I could see his mind,
like, constructing all these things
in his head.
One day, he tells me about a website
he set up called IsAnyoneUp.
Well, it all started with, um, you know,
me hating some dumb bitch who
broke my heart, really.
And that's how it started, dude.
Me and my friends would post
a bunch of girls on IsAnyoneUp.
And, uh, we just got a bunch of traffic
one day, and I was like,
"Yo, I can make money off titties
and fucking people over."
I just thought it was bizarre.
I just never fully grasped
what was going on.
But then he started posting nude photos
of popular bands, popular scene bands,
which grabbed a lot more attention.
The site went from 0 to 100 overnight.
[rock music playing]
[metalcore music playing]
[man] I was a vocalist
for a scene band called We Are Defiance.
We were based in Central Florida.
The music was very aggressive
and had lots of screaming.
And, you know, that was my job was to,
you know, scream into a mic for a living.
My intuition tells me ♪
Something ain't right ♪
Ah! ♪
[man] Scene was a subculture.
This was definitely the primordial ooze
from which Hunter Moore came out of.
We had the brooding energy of the emos,
the "fuck you" attitude of the punks.
It was all about the tight jeans,
tight T-shirt,
as many tattoos as you could get,
and the big hair.
[hardcore music playing]
[Twitter tweets]
The whole experience was wild.
Girls, partying, drugs.
[man] Oh my God! Oh my gosh!
[Brian] IsAnyoneUp took off at a time
where smartphones first appeared.
And the Sidekick was a smartphone
that everyone on the scene was using.
What do you do with a phone
with a camera?
Take pictures of your dick
and send it to people on social media.
[chuckles]
It was a common thing
for people to send dick pics,
or, you know, girls to send pictures
of their boobs to people.
It was a way of flirting.
But at that point in time, the Internet
just felt like this kind of fun festival.
Hunter Moore, he showed the world
that the Internet is fucking permanent.
And it has the power to ruin your life.
[Hunter] I'm a scene kid at heart,
so if you like to view boobs and penises
of your favorite bands or whatever,
I mean, it's gonna get a lot worse.
[Brian]
IsAnyoneUp was a super shocking thing.
Everyone was talking about it.
Everyone was posting about it.
It was, like, viral in our scene
before viral was viral.
[man] My favorite thing
is "No Butthole No Care."
Where'd you come up with that?
[Hunter] I was hella pissed 'cause, like,
girls were just sending me titty shots,
and I was like,
"Where the fuck is your asshole?"
I just put "No Butthole No Care"
on a post, and it just fucking took off.
[Brian] Hunter was very much,
like, controlling the drama.
He was the, you know, ringleader.
"Are we gonna make fun of this person
or are we gonna praise them
for these pictures?"
And that would just snowball.
It was the Wild West days of the Internet
before rules and regulations came in.
You could just unleash this vile
on people that you didn't even know,
and there would be no repercussions.
But what really made
IsAnyoneUp a unique beast was the way
that Hunter Moore would purposefully
connect your social media accounts
to the photos
that were being submitted of you.
People could easily access you.
They could look at your naked picture
and then also go find your Facebook.
There is no hiding behind the Internet.
You were fully on display.
[Hunter] I mean, you can post pictures,
you know, of random boobs
and penises all day,
but just adding that social network to it
just puts it to a whole nother level.
[keyboard clacking]
[Charlotte]
Kayla's social media had been posted
on the IsAnyoneUp site
along with her photos.
And because her Twitter page
was listed, and also her name,
people knew how to get in touch
with her on other social media.
Very quickly got
over 1,000 extra followers
because of those pictures.
[computer chimes]
- Lots of guys reaching out to me
- [computer chimes]
talking about my body sexually.
- [computer chimes]
- And I just wanted to
delete everything, block everything,
get rid of everything so that I didn't
receive any more attention.
Kayla shut down her social media.
[phone buzzing]
But then she started getting phone calls.
She got calls from random men.
I was curled in a ball in bed, not moving,
upset, crying,
completely helpless.
I felt just
really violated.
Kayla and Charlotte
were acting very strangely,
whispering in the corner,
shutting themselves in rooms.
One's imagination runs wild.
What could it be?
Pregnancy? Drugs? Crime?
So I did ask, of course, after a while.
I asked Charlotte what was going on,
and she declined to tell me.
And I think he knew
he was being kept out of the loop,
but it was important
to Kayla that he not be told.
I asked her
how the picture had gotten on the site,
and she said that she had taken it
in the privacy of her room,
but she had never sent the picture
to anyone, and I believed her.
I was having some fun
in my bedroom
just taking some pictures,
in the mirror, of myself.
And I decided to take some topless photos.
What's so wrong with wanting
to take a photo of yourself
in the privacy of your own home
and saving it for yourself?
My cell phone ran out of space,
so I sent the photos to
my email address.
[phone clicking]
So I'm sitting there trying to figure out
how my photos ended up on this website.
[Charlotte]
Kayla told me that a week earlier,
she had been locked out
of her social media, out of her email.
She had to reset passwords in order to
get access to some of her accounts again.
I was freaking out.
Someone was taking over my account.
So I drew the conclusion that
her accounts had been hacked.
The person who locked her out
of her accounts must have been
the person who posted
this topless picture onto this website.
I felt
that I didn't really have any privacy,
and that's even more mortifying.
You know, I just tried to tell her that
I was gonna help her get the picture down.
Hunter's website claimed that you could
send a request for content to be removed
and he would remove it.
Well, hopefully, we just have to send
a letter, just send him an email,
per the website, and he'll just remove it.
That's what I was hoping.
When I sent the email,
it came from Kayla. We wrote it together.
And she made a plea to him
to take it down.
I told him that
the photos had been hacked.
And I never wanted them
on the website in the first place.
[Charlotte] We told him that
the picture was copyrighted,
'cause whoever takes a picture
of themself owns that copyright.
[Kayla] I felt like I could somehow
appeal to his human side
and express to him how this
was really making me feel emotionally.
He sent back an email asking about
the hacking, saying he wanted proof of it.
And so we were able to send that to him,
and then it was crickets.
We never heard another word from him.
[Kayla] He just didn't care
and pretty much just
shut the door in my face, basically.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Brian] Every day, you wake up,
you're checking IsAnyoneUp.
You're enthralled by it.
You love it,
and once you're on it, different story.
I'm home from tour.
I go out with my friends for some drinks.
You know, we're talking about the website.
You know, I leave my phone at the bar.
I go to the bathroom.
I come back, and my friend, she's like,
"Hey, I submitted you to the website."
I'm like, "Are you serious?
Are you kidding me?"
She took photos off my phone
and sent them in to the site,
thinking it'd be a joke
that could be funny.
The picture was just a picture of me,
you know, holding my penis.
I mean, I was talking to a girl.
We're flirting, and a picture was taken,
sent to her, you know, just for her.
The submission form was incredibly simple.
It was anonymous,
which takes away any sense
of responsibility
or repercussions for doing it.
You had the power to ruin someone's life
with just one click.
[click]
I wake up in the morning, and my phone
is flooded with notifications.
[phone chiming and buzzing]
I'm like, "Shit."
Yeah, I got posted on the site.
Having pictures of yourself
naked on the Internet
just gives you anxiety,
'cause you have no control.
So I called Hunter, and I was like,
"Hey, can you take my post down?"
And he's like, "It's nothing against you,
nothing personal. It's just business."
Hunter was, like,
the first, like, Internet troll.
I think he liked the power
he had over people.
He was extremely talented
at getting people's attention.
Now he's doing interviews
with, like, mainstream media companies.
[man] Hunter Moore
is a 26-year-old web renegade,
and his website IsAnyoneUp
was designed for public humiliation
on a scale only the Internet can offer.
[Hunter] It's, um, where
revengeful exes
come for a peace of mind.
[man] He calls it revenge porn.
[Brian] The website stopped
being about kind of band people.
You started to see, like,
moms or wives or nurses or doctors.
The silliness and the fun of it,
it was long gone.
It became purely
for revenge and exploitation.
[suspenseful music playing]
[keyboard clacking]
[Charlotte] I didn't think
that what Hunter was doing was legal.
He actually posted information
of who his attorney was.
- And so I called his attorney.
- [line ringing]
My name is Reza Sina, and I used to be
Hunter Moore's personal lawyer.
Out of nowhere in January 2012,
I start getting direct emails
and phone calls from people saying,
"Hey, my picture is on the site,
and it shouldn't be on this site."
"It must be taken down."
I definitely got the sense
that he just didn't take me seriously,
and he was just kind of
not really going to end up helping.
[Reza]
Charlotte Laws was mad and pissed off.
But according to the law,
what Hunter was doing was not illegal.
Section 230
of the Communications Decency Act
basically says that website owners
are not generally responsible
for the content on their website
if it's user submitted.
All he's doing is providing a forum
for people to put it up.
"I'm just providing a platform.
It isn't me, folks."
"It's other people
who are coming to my site."
"They're the bad guys.
Not me. Don't blame me."
[man] And as for the guy responsible
for IsAnyoneUp, Hunter Moore,
well, Forbes reports that Moore made
$13,000 a month off the site.
Hunter had two revenue streams.
Selling merchandise
and selling advertising.
The more users you have on a website,
the more hits you have on a website,
the more you can charge for advertising.
So, you see, the problem is
if Hunter keeps taking down pictures,
then he's gonna get less users.
It's against his business model.
[man] Do you consider yourself
a scumbag or just an outlet?
'Cause, let's be honest, man,
people hate you.
[Hunter] You're sending these pictures
to some cute boy
you probably met on the Internet.
And then they submit 'em to me.
I don't know why all these people hate me.
I'm just the one putting it out there
and making money off your penis.
- [man] Oh my God, awesome.
- [Hunter] But, yeah.
[man laughs]
Most people seemed to think it was cool.
"Oh, look at this bad boy who's come up
with a new way to make money."
For me and Kayla,
it was just overwhelming.
You couldn't do anything to stop him.
He thought of himself
as the king of revenge porn.
[people cheering]
[man] I got a question for you.
Who came to see Hunter Moore?
[crowd cheering]
[woman] Fuck you, Hunter!
Hey, just chill out, sweetheart.
I'll get you pregnant later. Listen
[cheering]
[Mike] He was really trying to build
this brand of the Internet bad boy.
He didn't give a fuck
if you hated him or not.
You were still fueling
this project of his.
[woman]
So what's your vision with your career
now that you have established
IsAnyoneUp.com?
I mean, I'm going to be literally
the white P. Diddy, honestly.
I'm gonna be worth $100 million
by the time I'm 30. I already know that.
Like,
I'm literally gonna take over the world.
[Mike] The website was so popular,
it was getting
something along the lines of
350,000 unique views a day.
And Internet traffic
has inflated, uh, tenfold.
So if IsAnyoneUp was happening in 2021,
that 350,000 unique visitors a day
would be 3.5 million.
[keyboard clacking]
As much as I hate to say it,
I think that Hunter tapped into something
that's deep inside us.
He made it appear
that you would be very successful
by being a complete sociopath
on the Internet.
[keyboard clacking]
[Charlotte] I was checking the website,
and I came upon one of Kayla's friends.
And so I called this girl.
And she was just completely freaked out
about being on the site.
She said that the photos
had been stolen out of a private email.
Which kind of made me go,
"Oh, well, that's really weird,
because I only know
two people who are on that website,
and they were both hacked."
She said that,
"You better not try to go against
Hunter Moore. He's a dangerous guy."
She had great fear
of being on Hunter's radar.
[clicking]
[Hunter] If you try to sue me,
I'll make fuckin' fun of you.
You come to my house and serve me,
I'll put your address out there,
and my audience loves that shit.
[Charlotte] I was not about to be
intimidated or deterred.
The hacking was a huge deal,
but I'd need more evidence to prove it.
I had to focus on getting
Kayla's photo down as quickly as possible.
I called Hunter's publicist, his agent,
some of his advertisers.
I was trying to kind of get
as much pressure on him
from as many different directions
as possible.
I was completely traumatized.
And all I could hear outside my door
in the hallway was my mom talking.
She was going in all avenues,
any which way that she could,
to get my photos down
as quick as possible.
[Charlotte] I even called the office
where his mom worked.
And that got back to him
because Hunter posted something
on his Twitter feed about how someone
had called his mom's workplace.
I didn't get any positive feedback
from any of these phone calls.
Nobody had any interest
in assisting in any way.
Then one day, there was this email
from an anonymous individual.
I don't know who it was, and it said,
"Back off, bitch, or else."
Signed "the Family."
It was really quite shocking,
and I thought to myself,
"What on earth is the Family?"
I'm about to go knock out
the biggest guy I can find.
The Family, it was his cult following.
They're all calling Hunter "Father."
They're all, you know,
kind of mindlessly following him
and, you know, doing whatever he says.
They would create new content
for Hunter to post.
[woman] Princess toothbrush. Gotta have.
Dude, I'm crying.
[woman] Just let it be in my pee.
A little
Yo, that's the same girl
that brushed her teeth with shit.
Nasty bitch.
[Brian] You know, a girl brushed her teeth
after washing it in the toilet.
No! No. No.
People were just going through
crazy lengths to get his attention.
Fuck you, Hunter Moore.
[hooting] Oh, my car!
[Hunter] The Internet,
it all comes down to numbers.
You know, how many followers you have,
how many likes you have on Facebook.
[girls] Hi! We miss you!
[Hunter]
The more you have, the more people
are gonna think
you're cool and interesting.
[farts]
[Hunter]
So when you get posted on a site like mine
with so much traffic
and so much attention,
your numbers are gonna skyrocket.
It's, like, 15 minutes of Internet fame.
[man huffing]
Oh shit!
There's no doubt that Hunter Moore
was a master of manipulation,
and I think
the most extreme example of that
was Butthole Girl.
[woman] I'm gonna step out of the way.
Scene one, take one and B.
Can you stop?
Count mark.
My name is Destiny Benedict,
and I'm known as Butthole Girl
on IsAnyoneUp.
Hunter was, like, very compelling.
Like, I wanted to be accepted by him
and, like, noticed,
and he had this way about him
of getting people to do
whatever he wanted them to do.
I was 19 years old.
I wanted to get out of my mother's house
and kind of be more on my own
and self-sufficient.
One of my friends told me,
"Hey, you should try webcamming.
You know, you'd be perfect for this."
People tip you money to see your boobs.
Just sitting in front of a camera,
I could make enough to pay my own rent
and be able to provide for my children.
I got a message
from a friend saying, like,
"Hey, you know,
you're pretty open sexually."
"Like, you should check out this site.
Like, it's called IsAnyoneUp."
I just couldn't stop looking at it.
And I felt like being posted
on IsAnyoneUp, it would attract people
to my webcam sites.
And if you're famous,
with fame comes money.
So I sent my nudes.
I wanted to be selling myself
as this, like, beautiful, amazing woman,
this fantasy girl, and everybody is like,
"Did you see that new hot girl
posted on IsAnyoneUp?"
But not long after that,
I was in a webcam chat
with a couple of my friends,
and they had dared me
to basically put
a mousse bottle in my butt.
One of the people in the chat room
took the screenshot
and submitted it to IsAnyoneUp.
I wanted to be a hot girl on the site.
And then it just became,
you know, me with a mousse bottle
in my butt instead.
[all] Oh!
[laughs] Ew.
[Destiny] Not only that, but a screenshot
of my Facebook was above it
with my children in the cover photo.
I feel kind of, like, stupid.
And I obviously knew
they posted Facebook pictures.
So why didn't I think to take
my kids off my cover photo
if I was submitting nudes?
I didn't think of that.
I didn't think about it back then.
The Internet can be a really cruel place.
Hunter was not willing to take
the screenshot of my kids off of there.
The only thing that would work,
I felt, was if I offered
to take more pictures
of things in my butt.
I mean
that's what drew everybody in.
The one that he suggested
was a cell phone.
He wanted me
to put the cell phone in my butt,
and then he would call it,
and it would vibrate.
Um, he thought that would be really funny.
So I took the photo,
and that's how Butthole Girl was born.
[Mike]
Butthole Girl was an Internet phenomenon.
And she became
definitely the most famous person
from this website after Hunter Moore.
Hunter replaced the cover photo
as soon as those pictures went out.
I had a lot of attention.
A lot of people were tweeting about it.
I had people like Jeffree Star saying,
"That's what I call a real booty call."
I had never imagined myself being famous
for putting things in my butt.
You know, I wanted
more than that.
[keyboard clacking]
[Charlotte] I was getting
death threats from the Family,
and I realized
I wasn't just taking on Hunter Moore.
I was taking on thousands of his minions.
It was really scary
because everyone just worshiped him
like he was a king, like he was a god.
He had a lot of people saying,
"I will do anything for you, Father."
"I will kill for you."
I had no idea how they would retaliate
against me and my family.
So I went
to Los Angeles Police Department.
And Kayla went with me.
And I went up to the counter
and talked to a female detective
and told her the situation
and that Kayla had been hacked
and that her picture was on this website.
She looked over at Kayla and said,
"Why would you take a picture like this
if you didn't want it on the Internet?"
[Kayla]
She was blaming me for taking the photo.
It was so uncomfortable.
And I just wanted to
run away.
I told the detective,
"If Kayla had taken the photo
in her room and put it in a dresser drawer
and someone had broken in and stolen it,
would you be telling her
that she shouldn't have taken the picture
or would you be investigating the theft?"
The detective, she seemed annoyed by that.
I didn't think they
were really gonna investigate anything.
[rock music playing]
Yeah, should you do time
for sharing pics online?
If I'm dumb enough to send a naked photo
of myself to a boyfriend, to a lover,
to whatever, and they decide
out of vengeance five years later
when I'm mean to them to post it
somewhere, that's actually my problem.
Everybody said, "It's the victims' fault."
"Don't take a picture
if you don't want it on the Internet."
All of that was circulating.
Really, nobody was on the victims' side
- [mouse clicks]
- while Hunter was destroying lives.
So my children's fathers
basically decided that
since I was affiliated with IsAnyoneUp
and since I was doing porn now,
that it would be in the best interest
to keep me out of the children's lives.
The whole point of being Butthole Girl was
to get my children's photos
off of IsAnyoneUp.
But they just decided
that I was just this abomination
and that I wasn't worthy
of being around my children.
My children were my whole world.
I kind of got down and depressed
and started drinking here and there.
And I had been, like, posting online
that I was, like, drunk,
and having a good time,
or making it seem like it, rather.
That's what you do on social media, right?
[chuckles]
It had caught the attention of Hunter,
and I remember him messaging me
that we should get on Skype.
Even though I felt like he was
destroying my reputation, destroying,
you know, my life,
I
still wanted his attention.
He had promised to help me
set up a website
for me to get my porn more out there,
and I could make enough money
to get my kids back in my life.
["Bad Things" playing]
Yeah, big dreams, baby
Yeah, we have big dreams ♪
[Destiny] He really wanted me
to put my fist in my butt,
but I wasn't entirely comfortable
with the idea of that.
- Yeah, we have big dreams ♪
- Yeah ♪
And we're gonna make you
Do bad things ♪
[Destiny] And he's like,
"This is how you get famous, you know."
"This is what you gotta do
if you want your own site."
"Gotta be Butthole Girl.
Get that famous butthole out."
I was drunk, and I was willing to,
you know, be, like, "Okay, whatever."
We don't do ♪
Hunter just kept saying, like, you know,
"Put your fist in your ass." And
And I
I I just kind of, you know,
caved in and did it.
I wasn't proud of it.
You say I'm bad
Like it's a bad thing ♪
You say I'm bad
Like it's a bad thing ♪
You say I'm bad ♪
I didn't even know
that he was screen recording
the conversation,
and if I did,
then I was in a state of mind where
if I agreed, I probably
wasn't actually agreeing. [chuckles]
[mouse clicks]
[Destiny]
I actually don't know if he sold it.
But it didn't end up on IsAnyoneUp.
It ended up
on a different website entirely.
I just remember checking the video
and seeing it climb up and up and up.
And it went from, like,
thousands to a million.
That's when I stopped checking,
'cause then I was like,
"It's already hit a million, you know."
[keyboard clacking]
It's just incredibly awful
to not be able to control
the things that are being put out.
It's a representation of me
in my most vulnerable state.
I never got a dime.
I never got any money
from Hunter Moore, like, ever. [chuckles]
But he did offer to give me a T-shirt.
[suspenseful music playing]
[keyboard clacking]
[Charlotte] We were very concerned
that Kayla's picture would be circulated
to other websites.
And the longer a picture stays online,
the better chance that could happen.
It becomes virtually impossible
to get down.
If Los Angeles police wouldn't listen,
I knew I'd have to go above their heads
and contact the FBI.
Hunter Moore loved saying
that he wasn't doing anything illegal,
and I knew hacking was illegal,
so if he was involved in a hacking scheme,
boy, I knew
he was gonna be in big trouble,
and I was gonna be able
to totally nail him.
So I called and told them the story.
I was determined
to get them to take it seriously.
They took the information
and said that three agents
would be coming to my house
later in the month.
But they weren't giving me
the immediate solution that I needed.
The clock was ticking.
It was time to ask Charles for help.
Charles was an attorney, and even though
Kayla did not want me to tell him,
I felt like we had a much better chance
of getting the photo down
if he was on board.
[Charles] My first reaction
when Charlotte told me Kayla's picture
had been put up on this website,
I was extremely surprised.
You know, I was a middle-aged man
before I ever set foot on a computer,
before the Internet showed up.
It was completely new
that this sort of thing went on at all.
I thought the best way to deal
with the photo was to do nothing about it.
You give it attention and it gets worse.
Charles just said, "Don't worry about it.
Just move on. Leave it up there."
"People will forget about it anyway."
And Kayla got very upset, jumped up.
"I knew we shouldn't have told him!"
And she just kind of goes rampaging
up to her room, like, in tears.
I was honestly really, really shocked.
I didn't want my photo
just staying out there.
I said to Charles,
"You know, you don't go on the Internet."
"You know nothing about the Internet.
And pictures do not disappear."
"Nude pictures are gonna proliferate."
"It's gonna get worse over time,
not better."
I don't know if Charlotte resented
the fact that I wasn't helping.
And in fact, I was helping to a degree.
I was offering a solution
that she found unacceptable,
because I thought I couldn't imagine
who would look at a website like that.
He just said,
"I don't wanna get involved."
And he walked into the living room
and sat in his chair.
I couldn't rely on Charles.
I knew I had to keep pushing,
keep persevering,
and get the picture down myself.
In order to be able to present
the case to the FBI,
I thought it was very important
to reach out to victims
and find out how they got on the site.
I needed to prove that Hunter was hacking.
I would see people posted on the website,
and I would find out information
based on that posting.
The women I talked to,
and some of the men, too, as well,
were really emotionally destroyed by this.
There was a teacher from Kansas
who, um, Hunter had said,
"Should I post this teacher?
Do you think she'll lose her job?"
And all of his followers were like,
"Yeah, post her! Post her!"
And then, bam, her pictures were up.
The next morning, the principal actually
marched into her classroom and said,
"Get your things together and go home."
And she goes, "Why?"
"Get your things together and go home."
I called her,
and I'm the first one who told her she was
on the site, and she was just devastated.
Then later she calls me back
with her boyfriend
and says, "I don't know what to do."
"We don't have any money for a lawyer.
We don't have anybody to talk to."
"I'm gonna lose my job."
She was so devastated. [sniffles]
So it was really hard
talking to these people.
There were a lot of stories like this.
Hunter Moore was willing to post anything.
The more it would impact somebody
in a negative way,
the more it would destroy their life,
the better from his perspective.
That's what he wanted.
This doesn't just stay online.
This can drive you to kill yourself.
[computer tweets]
[woman] March 2011, I would say,
is where I can,
like, look at the calendar in my brain
and point to the day everything changed.
I was young. I was, like, 22.
I had, like, this great apartment
in downtown Buffalo.
I was training to be a nurse,
and I loved it. I was happy in my life.
[mouse clicks]
[phone clicking]
I woke up
like any other day.
And, you know, you wake up,
you look at your phone and
200 notifications?
How? Why?
I'm going through the messages,
and it's my name
and then a link to a website
that I had never heard of.
[computer chimes]
[Cara] When I went to the actual website,
it was naked girls,
and then I saw myself.
It was two pictures.
One, I had, like, a bra on,
and one I was topless.
Now I'm embarrassed
and ashamed and mad.
The comments were just,
like, demeaning, like, degrading.
How I had one boob bigger than the other,
or, like, my nose was weird.
What was worse
was it was all my information.
My first and last name
and my address,
all my links to social media,
my phone number.
It felt dangerous.
I did not send
that topless photo to anybody,
which just left me wondering
how the hell it got onto the Internet.
It feels like you're getting walked in on
when you're doing something private.
It's unnerving.
I reached out to Hunter multiple times
on multiple platforms.
[keyboard clacking]
[computer chimes]
[keyboard clacking]
[computer chimes]
I asked what did I have to do for him
to make it go away.
[keyboard clacking]
[computer chimes]
I never found out
because there was never a response.
I wasn't sleeping.
It was all I could think about.
It was all my energy could go towards,
and it was just draining me of
my self-esteem and my self-worth
and, like,
making me question my ability.
"Do I deserve the job I have?"
"Do I deserve the life I have?"
You know, it very quickly spiraled for me.
He didn't want self-submits.
He didn't want people who said,
"Here, Hunter, post my picture."
No. That wasn't interesting.
That wasn't gonna get page views.
That's not what the site was about.
He wanted people
who did not wanna be there,
who could not afford to be on that site.
He wanted total and complete
humiliation of these individuals.
[man] Has there been any individual victim
who you've just felt sorry for
to the point that you were moved to
take something down,
and, oh, I don't know,
apologize?
[Hunter]
I felt really bad about a lot of things.
I've had points where I felt so bad,
I've, uh, wanted to stop the site,
to be honest with you.
[man] And what stopped you from stopping?
[Hunter] Um
It's just too much fun.
I started punishing myself
with food, or the lack thereof,
where I would binge and purge.
I felt, like, just so worthless
and so out of control that that was
that was what I can control.
I went to the pharmacy,
and refilled my prescriptions,
two of which were controlled substances,
and I got back to my apartment.
And
I just said, "Fuck it."
I took a sip of my drink,
and I drank the entire first bottle
of controlled substances.
And then I remember just being like,
"Okay, here we go."
And I took the other bottle.
And I got into my bathtub,
um, and had barricaded the door.
What had actually woken my roommate up
was my cat outside the bathroom door,
like, losing her mind.
I, um, was sent to the ICU.
And I was in a coma
for several several days.
I don't think that I would have ever
attempted to take my own life
had that moment of being posted
never occurred.
That is the catalyst
that mentally snapped
something in my brain.
A short while after I had finally
gotten home from the hospital,
a woman named Charlotte Laws
reached out to me.
And she told me she was looking to pursue
some sort of legal action against Hunter
and would I mind sharing some of my story.
I spoke to Cara. She was wounded.
She was completely devastated
over having her nude picture online.
It just made me more determined
to try and help all the victims
get their pictures down.
She really inspired
that little bit of hope that
I think I'd been hopeless for so long,
I was very grateful to have that support,
because there was the other end
of the Internet who was like,
"Yay, Hunter, you're doing amazing!"
It's just like,
"No, you're doing so much damage."
[suspenseful music playing]
[keyboard clacking]
[Charles] So Charlotte
was carrying on her own battle.
And then one day,
when I came home from work,
there was a fax on the fax machine.
[machine whirring]
[Charles]
It was for Charlotte, but I read it.
Here's what it says. Hard to believe.
"Hey, ugly bitch, get off Hunter's dick."
"If you don't, we'll rape you
and put a shotgun
down your throat."
Well, that was what it said.
I thought,
"Okay, that's really"
"That's That's the case, isn't it?
That's a case for war."
And I realized at that moment
that I had been slow to act,
and it was time for me
to take action as an attorney
without any further delay.
I picked up the phone,
and I called Hunter Moore's attorney.
[line ringing]
And I told him copyright law is clear.
The photo belonged to Kayla.
The photograph had been stolen,
so it was clearly theft.
And I told him
it would cost his client huge fees,
whereas my client,
who was my stepdaughter,
had a free lawyer. [chuckles]
That was her piece of good fortune.
I said,
"This is a good deal for your client."
"All he has to do is remove one picture
from his site."
"And if he doesn't, I will file action,
and it will cost him thousands."
"You know that. I know that.
And you've got 30 minutes to get it done."
I remember Charles.
This guy was seriously pissed off.
And I said, "Look, ultimatums
aren't gonna work well with Hunter."
"They don't fly well with him,
but let me give him a call
and see what I could do
to have it taken down."
After I got off the phone with Charles,
I immediately called Hunter.
I was pissed. I was pissed off that
I'm still cleaning up Hunter's messes.
I told him he should
take down the picture right away.
Charles was adamant
that someone hacked Kayla's email.
Being told from a lawyer-to-lawyer
standpoint, you take him more seriously.
After the incident with Kayla Laws,
I took every step
to remove myself formally
from any activity with Hunter Moore.
Kayla and I, uh, went in the other room,
and we watched the clock
and watched the clock.
[clock ticking]
And we just keep refreshing it
and refreshing it and refreshing it.
[Charlotte] We were very nervous.
Hoping and praying
that it was gonna come down.
And then after 30 minutes,
we looked on the site.
[suspenseful music playing]
Finally.
Finally, it's removed.
I feel this
just big wave of relief over me.
[calming music playing]
[Charles] Charlotte came in and said,
"It's done. It's down."
Well, I felt very well satisfied
and very pleased
and very happy on Kayla's behalf.
As far as Kayla was concerned,
that was the end of the matter.
She wanted life
to go straight back to normal.
She didn't wanna think about it again.
And I was of the same mind.
But Charlotte could not let it go.
Charles said, "Okay. It's time to stop."
Kayla wanted me to stop as well.
But I had no intention of stopping.
[suspenseful music playing]
There's no way I'm just gonna abandon
all of these women I said I would help.
I mean, I'm just not gonna do that.
You wanna fuck with me?
I'mma fuck with you.
That's what I do.
Hunter was continuing to destroy lives.
[Hunter] I'm a badass fucking dude.
I had to fight
to take down his website completely,
to get him off the Internet.
But if I was going to war
against Hunter Moore,
I'd need some allies to bring him down.
[suspenseful music playing]