(Photo: Top13.net)

Famously elusive street artist Banksy has not been arrested. His real identity has not been revealed. His name is not Paul William Horner.

But you'd be forgiven for thinking so. Earlier today, outlets like Jezebel, Complex and Death and Taxes published stories saying that Banksy had been arrested by British police. These outlets sourced their reports to a press release that purported to be from the BBC, posted on the press release hub PRLog. (The release has since been removed.)

The release stated that Banksy is a 39-year-old Bristol man named Paul William Horner, and he'd been arrested during a police sting. But the document is riddled with inconsistencies, including quotes from fake CNN and BBC stories and an incorrect identification of the London Chief of Police, who the press release claims to quote. (City of London Police Commissioner is named Adrian Leppard, not Wayne Leppard, as the release stated.) Furthermore, the email address for the press release is at the domain name IYWIB, a little-known humor site.

As it turns out, a man named Paul Horner is the editor of Super Official News, a site that appears to be part of the same family as IYWIB. Super Official News was the first site to publish a post saying Banksy had been arrested.

This isn't the first time in recent months that a fake press release has sent reporters scrambling to figure out what's real and what's not. Back in November, a fake press release distributed on PR Web set off a rash of false stories about a Google acquisition of wireless company ICOA. It's like you can't even trust press releases anymore!

(Photo: Reddit)

The creeps just can't be held down. Jezebel reports that the subreddit Creepshots--which has been at the forefront of controversy recently and helped spur a war between Gawker Media and Reddit--is back in action.

The original Creepshots subreddit was banned by Reddit administrators last week, along with "Creepsquad," a new subreddit which had popped up to collect Creepshots refugees. In an attempt to retaliate against Jezebel for posting the original feature about Creepshots, Creepsquad posted a photo of Jezebel writer Katie J.M. Baker to its front page.

Reddit general manager Erik Martin confirmed to Betabeat that Creepsquad was banned by Reddit administrators, but did not elaborate as to why. Typically, subreddits are only banned if they break one of Reddit's five rules.

Having been ousted from Creepshots and Creepsquad, Redditors are now collecting in r/Cshots and r/CandidFashionPolice, invoking the term "candid" to justify the photos posted in these forums without the consent of the women featured in them.

r/Cshots is moderated by the same cast of characters who haunted the other creepshots subreddits, including Potato_in_my_anus, who was banned after Reddit's community manager found that he had created a subreddit "that disregarded the rules of reddit regarding sexualizing teens/minors."

r/Cshots takes swing at what it perceives as Reddit's hypocrisy for allowing sites like r/ladyboners--where users post photos of (primarily famous and consenting) men--to exist while shutting down Creepshots. It also purports to be a site for lesbians to look at photos of women, most likely as a way to stifle cries of "sexism" that have been lobbed at Creepshots in the past. Its moderators have adopted titles such as "Women's Shelter Employee," in a brazen attempt to keep it classy.

The Cshots sidebar reads:

You may be wondering what constitutes candid. If a person is posing for and/or aware that a picture is being taken, then it ceases to be candid. A candid photograph captures the natural, raw beauty of the subject without their vain attempts at putting on a show for the camera. That is the essence of candid, that is what makes it worth the effort of taking the photograph and that is why this subreddit exists. This is a place for lesbians to appreciate attractive, beautiful and gorgeous women.

The adoption of a lesbian slant is new to r/cshots. When Betabeat first stumbled upon the subreddit in the wake of the Creepshots fiasco, it did not to purport to be for lesbians.

r/CandidFashionPolice is in the same vein. "In this subreddit people post candid photos of women and then we judge their fashion choices similar to TLC's what not to wear," reads its sidebar. "That's it, we don't judge women's bodies, JUST THEIR FASHION CHOICES." Photos taken of women without their consent are coupled with headlines that follow the subreddit's number one rule: "Please speak like a sassy Diva when commenting or posting."

As Jezebel points out, many of the photos posted to r/CandidFashionPolice also appear in Cshots.

We've reached out to Reddit general manager Erik Martin to ask whether, like Creepshots and Creepsquad, Reddit plans to ban CandidFashionPolice and Cshots. We'll update when we hear back.

Update:

Reddit has now banned r/Cshots, but r/CandidFashionPolice is still up.

(Screengrab: Predditors)

Predditors, the Tumblr that posts the personal information of Reddit users who publish photos to the controversial subreddit Creepshots, is back up and running after a tumultuous few days. The blog was initially removed by Tumblr after administrators there mistakenly believed that the information being published was personal information. In fact, the author of Predditors is simply stringing together information available on public profiles posted by the users.

But once Tumblr put Predditors back up, its author panicked--perhaps because of the scale of the story the blog had ignited, coupled with lingering fears that she could be outed. First it was password protected, then it was taken down. Now, predditors.tumblr.com is back up, but the URL Predditors.com redirects to the original Jezebel coverage. The author appears to have individually re-uploaded each post to the Tumblr this morning.

Predditors came to prominence when Jezebel published a feature about the blog and its author, a 25-year-old female Redditor who goes by the name "Samantha." It has been at the focal point of a war between Gawker Media and Reddit, stoked by Adrian Chen's piece outing notorious Redditor Violentacrez, who was a moderator for Creepshots.

(Photo: Reddit)

For the last few hours, the controversial subreddit Creepshots--which is at the center of an "inter-website war" over photos users published of non-consenting women--has been inaccessible.

The message "This subreddit has been banned" is affixed front and center. The banned page notes that the subreddit may have been caught in the site's spam filter, but Reddit general manager Erik Martin confirmed to Betabeat that a moderator from Creepshots asked an admin to ban the subreddit.

Previously: Reddit Readies for Brewing 'Inter-Website War'; Major Subreddits Ban Link to Gawker Media

Creepshots' former members immediately flocked to r/Creepsquad, set up for refugees of the shuttered subreddit. Now, Mr. Martin has also confirmed to Betabeat that Reddit administrators have decided--without moderator request--to ban Creepsquad as well. It went dark around 8 p.m. this evening.

Mr. Martin, who is still on the Reddit Open Internet bus tour, declined to elaborate why the subreddit had been banned.

Earlier this evening, the moderators of Creepsquad published a photo of Jezebel journalist Katie J.M. Baker to the front page of the subreddit, perhaps in an effort to intimidate her. Ms. Baker has been the target of Reddit backlash following a story she published yesterday featuring an interview with the anonymous woman behind Predditors, a Tumblr that publishes the personal information of Creepshots members who have been publishing photos of women without their consent. Predditors was removed by Tumblr, but has since been reinstated after a Tumblr spokesman said it was mistakenly believed to be revealing private information. Tumblr users have been passing around a master list of the "Predditors" after the author password-protected the original Tumblr.

Previously: Tumblr Reinstates Predditors, the Controversial Blog Publishing Personal Info About Redditors Behind Creepshots

Ms. Baker appears to be taking it all in stride. "Flattered that moderators of r/Creepsquad respect me enough to put a photo of me on the main page of their subreddit!" she coyly tweeted.

The removal of Creepsquad by Reddit admins comes as somewhat of a surprise. In an interview with Buzzfeed earlier today, Mr. Martin emphasized that Reddit does not remove content unless it violates one of Reddit's five rules. That implies that Creepsquad was removed because it violated one of those tenets, though he did not offer any details other than to admit it was removed by administrators.

There is precedent for banning subreddits. Last year, Reddit found itself embroiled in a controversy over r/jailbait, a subreddit where users posted sexualized photos of minors. Reddit subsequently updated its policy to include a new rule.

UPDATE: 

Reddit community manager and site admin David Croach has banned Potato_in_my_anus, the maturely-named user who created the now-banned subreddit Creepsquad. In a thread on Subreddit Drama, Mr. Croach wrote:

Regarding PIMA's ban...

There are actually a lot of rules that we (the admins) recently found out when we investigated his (PIMA's) account that he had broken. The most recent one was creating a subreddit that disregarded the rules of reddit regarding sexualizing teens/minors, and not being active in moderating posts that broke that rule. He's had multiple offenses in that category.

Here is a screenshot of the photo that Creepsquad posted of Ms. Baker, without comment, to the front page of the subreddit:

(Photo: Reddit)