The Most Hated Man on the Internet is a Netflix documentary which tells the story of the campaign against Hunter Moore's revenge porn empire.
The Most Hated Man on the Internet is a troubling three-part docuseries focused on Moore, a man who proclaimed himself a "professional life ruiner" and founded IsAnyoneUp.com, a website devoted to publicly posting explicit photos of people.
The docuseries features interviews with some of the people who fought to have their images taken down from the site as well as law enforcement agents and independent crusaders who took Hunter Moore on, all with a view of documenting how he got his comeuppance. In particular, it shows how Charlotte Laws (the mother of one of the site's victims) was instrumental in bringing Hunter down.
But where is Hunter Moore now? Who is Charlotte Laws? What happened to the website? We've got the answers to all your questions about The Most Hated Man on the Internet.
Who is Hunter Moore?
Hunter Moore is an American convicted criminal who created the IsAnyoneUp.com revenge porn website. The website allowed users to anonymously submit explicit photos of people without their consent. Those photos were then displayed on the site alongside their social media profiles and contact info.
The Most Hated Man on the Internet charts how he made huge amounts of money off the site and follows his rise and fall, as well as how Charlotte Laws took him on.
Who is Charlotte Laws?
Charlotte Laws is the mother of one of the many victims of the website, and the primary figure in The Most Hated Man on the Internet.
The docuseries follow Charlotte as she attempts to first get the photos of her daughter, Kayla, removed from IsAnyoneUp.com, and later seeks justice not only for her daughter, Kayla, but for many other victims of the site, too.
She was one of the first people to claim that Hunter Moore was at the middle of a hacking scheme to get hold of explicit photos for the site. Initially, her claims were not taken too seriously, so she began building a dossier of evidence and spoke to other victims around the world before eventually taking her findings to the FBI, who launched an investigation into Hunter's activities.
Charlotte has also led her own interesting life. She was working as an insurance company investigator at the time when she found out about Kayla's pictures being leaked, but over the years she's been a politician, a talk show host, a columnist, author and a TV pundit at NBC and the BBC. Surprisingly, she also once dated legendary singer Sir Tom Jones!
Since the website was closed down, Charlotte became an anti-revenge porn activist, and she has worked with legislators to propose laws protecting revenge porn victims.
How was Hunter Moore taken down?
Despite the efforts of many people to have their photos and information removed from the site, there weren't any laws against what Hunter was doing with IsAnyoneUp.com in the early 2010s, and victims were generally blamed for having taken the photos in the first place.
Ultimately, it was the accusations of hacking that eventually became his downfall. As we already mentioned, Charlotte Laws discovered there was a pattern of victims whose photos could only have been accessed via hacking as they hadn't sent them to anyone; an FBI investigation later found that Hunter did indeed have an accomplice who he had been paying to break into the victims' accounts.
Following an extensive FBI investigation into Hunter's activities, he was finally arrested on January 24 (via FBI archive).
Where is Hunter Moore now?
Little info is known about Hunter Moore right now. He was sentenced to two years and a half years in prison for his crimes and was also ordered to pay a $2000 fine and a restitution fee of $145.70.
He has kept a low profile ever since he was released from prison in 2017, but he did self-publish his own book about the site called Is Anyone Up?!: The Story of Revenge Porn a year after his release in 2018.
According to producer Vikki Miller, he was due to participate in The Most Hated Man on the Internet but pulled out at a later date. Miller said: "When Hunter pulled out, I was initially disappointed but then I completely changed my mind and am so glad we ended up telling it through Charlotte Laws' narrative.
She's an extraordinary character and fought extremely hard for justice to be done. Through Hunter's regular media appearances at the time we know what Hunter's thoughts were — and we included them." (quote via Metro)
Who was Hunter Moore's hacker and where is he now?
Charlie Evans — who went by the alias "Gary Jones" — worked for Hunter Moore to break into email accounts in order to obtain more explicit photos which Hunter then used on IsAnyoneUp.com. Kayla Laws, Charlotte's daughter, fell victim to one of Charlie's hacking attempts, which is how her photos ended up on the site.
Evans was also arrested in 2014. Evans was sentenced to 25 months in prison for his actions after pleading guilty to unauthorized access to a computer system to obtain information and aggregated identity theft.
He has kept his name out of the spotlight, but since he was only given 25 months in jail, he would have been released by 2017.
Is IsAnyoneUp.com still on the internet?
Entrepreneur James McGibney brought IsAnyoneUp.com offline around the same time Charlotte handed over her evidence to the FBI. As he explains in the documentary, he was immediately horrified by Hunter's actions with the site, so he worked to befriend him with the sole aim of figuring out a way to bring the site offline.
James successfully managed to purchase the website from Hunter Moore just 16 months after the site was originally founded. After purchasing it, he deleted the site's content and had the page redirected to his own anti-bullying website, bringing it offline in the process.
As he told VICE, McGibney did what he did because he wanted "to make an example of someone like Hunter Moore". He explained that he found a common ally with the hacking group Anonymous, who also targeted Hunter Moore in their own way.
The Most Hated Man on the Internet is available to stream on Netflix now (check out our best true crime documentaries on Netflix guide).
