Advertisement
Advertisement
TV shows and streaming video
Get more with myNEWS
A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you
Learn more
Ex-porn site owner Hunter Moore in a still from the new Netflix documentary The Most Hated Man on the Internet. Photo: TNS

Ex-porn site owner who used nude photos of non-consenting subjects profiled in new Netflix documentary

  • The exploits and downfall of Hunter Moore, who owned the revenge porn website IsAnyoneUp.com, is the subject of Netflix’s ‘The Most Hated Man on the Internet’
  • Moore once said he contemplated punching Mark Zuckerberg ‘because that would get me so popular. Like, unless I raped Steve Jobs, what else is there?’
USA TODAY

Who is The Most Hated Man on the Internet? Netflix’s new three-part documentary chronicles the downfall of one recklessly wicked webmaster, North California native Hunter Moore, who fed his adult site with nude photos of non-consenting subjects.

The docuseries (now streaming) features victims of the short-lived IsAnyoneUp.com, as well as those who were able to shut down the now 36-year-old Moore’s endeavour: law enforcement, a former US marine with a sense of vengeance for bullies, and a stop-at-nothing mother whose daughter’s stolen photos appeared on Moore’s website.

The website – active from 2010 to 2012 – displayed images submitted by the subjects, their exes or through hacking. The site also included personal information about those pictured, including social media accounts.

With no legislation in America to specifically combat “revenge porn” at the time, Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act provided Moore some protection, as the site’s content was generated by users and not the site itself. It’s the same defence that Facebook has been known to implement.

A screenshot of IsAnyoneUp.com when it was in operation. Photo: Netflix

When photos of Charlotte Laws’ daughter appeared on Moore’s website, she began to suspect Moore was relying on hacking for content. She launched her own investigation, and contacted the FBI and journalists, ignoring death threats by Moore’s mob of fans, dubbed “the family.”

Moore seemingly wasn’t prepared for an opponent as tenacious as Laws. She has two master’s degrees – one in professional writing and the other in social ethics – as well as a PhD in social ethics, according to her website. She had also exhibited her grit as a determined celebrity chaser, sharing her secrets in the 1988 book Meet the Stars (written under the name Missy Laws).

DC League of Super-Pets: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart team up

“If someone says I can’t get into a VIP area or go past the velvet rope, it just inspires me to try harder,” Laws says in the new series.

Laws’ efforts to take down Moore were noticed by his fans, who threatened in a fax sent to her home that “we’ll rape you and put a shotgun down your throat”.

But that threat didn’t deter her. Even when images of her daughter Kayla were removed from the website (thanks to pressure applied by Laws’ husband, lawyer Charles Parselle) she persisted, thinking of the others she had contacted who appeared on the site.

“There’s no way I’m just going to abandon all of these women that I said I was gonna help,” she says. “Hunter was continuing to destroy lives. I had to fight to take down his website completely, to get him off the internet.”

Charlotte Laws (left) with her daughter Kayla in a still from The Most Hated Man on the Internet. Photo: Netflix

Former marine James McGibney says in the docuseries that he offered Moore less than US$12,000 to acquire the website in April 2012. After buying it, McGibney then redirected the site to his anti-bullying resource BullyVille.com.

As a condition of the sale, McGibney asked Moore to write a letter apologising to victims, in which Moore stated he “might do some writing on BullyVille.com to help people who have been bullied” as he’d “been on both sides of the fence. I am putting this message up on BullyVille.com to stand up for underage bullying. I think it’s important that everyone realizes the damage that online bullying can cause.”

But Moore’s remorse was short-lived. He accused McGibney on Twitter of being a paedophile. McGibney successfully sued Moore for defamation and was awarded a judgment of US$250,000, plus legal fees, in 2013.

Former marine James McGibney in a still from The Most Hated Man on the Internet. Photo: Netflix

In February 2015, Moore pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorised access to a protected computer to obtain information for purposes of private financial gain, and one count of aggravated identity theft. That December, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison and a US$2,000 fine. Charles Evens, the hacker Moore paid to break into email accounts, was sentenced to 25 months.

Moore was released from a prison in Beaumont, Texas in 2017 after his sentence was reduced by his participation in the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Residential Drug Abuse Programme, he told federal prison consultant Dan Wise in a 2018 interview.

“I spent most of my time working out and going to the library,” Moore told Wise. Following his incarceration, Moore spent time at a halfway house and in home confinement.

Moore in a still from The Most Hated Man on the Internet. Photo: Netflix

Moore predicted massive success in his 20s.

“I’m gonna be worth US$100 million by the time I’m 30,” he says in a clip in the Netflix documentary. “I’m literally gonna take over the world.” And it appeared he would do it at any cost.

He told Rolling Stone writer Alex Morris, in a 2012 profile titled “Hunter Moore: The Most Hated Man on the Internet”, that he once contemplated punching Mark Zuckerberg “because that would get me so popular. Like, unless I raped Steve Jobs, what else is there?”

1