A PR firm has admitted to carrying out an online false
flag against the 4chan forum in which it blamed the website for a threat
to release naked pictures of actress Emma Watson as part of an appeal
to President Barack Obama to censor the Internet.
Rantic Marketing, a public relations company that has
worked with the likes of McDonalds and Rockstar Games, was outed as
being behind a website called EmmaYouAreNext.com which threatened to
release nude pictures of Watson in retaliation for her recent speech
about feminism in front of the United Nations.
However, the website misrepresented itself as being the
work of 4chan users, prompting a wave of articles in the media which
blamed users of the forum for the threat leveled against the actress.
“The threat went viral in the few days since it emerged,
receiving substantial media coverage, most of which seemed to wrongly
blame 4Chan for the threat,” writes John McCarthy.
When it was revealed
that EmmaYouAreNext.com was being hosted on the same server as
Rantic.com and FoxWeekly.com, an outlet that blamed 4chan for the
threat, the PR firm was forced to admit it was behind the stunt.
The website now forwards to Rantic.com, which features a
letter addressed to President Barack Obama demanding that 4chan be shut
down as a result of previous leaks of nude pictures of celebrities.
“The internet NEEDS to be censored,” states the letter.
The company says it was “hired by celebrity publicists”
to carry out the stunt. In one tweet which was later deleted, Rantic
referred to 4chan as a “terrorist group.”
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