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Whoopi Goldberg seemingly blames Bella Thorne over nude photo leak

Actress and model Bella Thorne is making headlines after choosing to release semi-nude photos of herself before some else does it for her.

She revealed that she made the decision after a hack that left her personal photos in the hands of someone who threatened to release them, writing on Twitter, “I can sleep tonight better knowing I took my power back.”

Whoopi Goldberg expressed little sympathy for the star on Monday’s episode of US chat show The View, effectively blaming Thorne for putting herself in a position to be hacked in the first place. “If you’re famous, I don’t care how old you are. You don’t take nude pictures of yourself,” she said.

Fellow panelist Sunny Hostin disagreed with Goldberg’s position. “It just saddens me that these kids have to go through this,” she said. “For someone to extort her or threaten her with posting these pictures, it’s terrible.”

"You cannot be surprised someone hacked you," said Goldberg on <i>The View</i>. (Lou Rocco/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images/Sthanlee B. Mirador/Sipa USA)
"You cannot be surprised someone hacked you," said Goldberg on The View. (Lou Rocco/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images/Sthanlee B. Mirador/Sipa USA)

But Goldberg doubled down. “Once you take that picture it goes into the cloud and it’s available to any hacker who wants it, and if you don’t know that in 2019 that this is an issue, I’m sorry. You don’t get to do that,” she said.

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Some viewers on Twitter disagreed with Goldberg’s opinion and spoke out in defence of Thorne:

Others agreed with Goldberg that taking nude photos is risky business:

This isn’t the first time hackers have targeted celebrities. Just last week, UK rock band Radiohead released hours of previously unheard audio from the recording of their seminal 1997 album OK Computer, after hackers demanded a ransom of $150,000.

Thom Yorke wrote of the 1.8gb collection, according to The Guardian, “It’s not v interesting. There’s a lot of it … as it’s out there it may as well be out there until we all get bored and move on.” The band are donating the money raised by the release to climate change activists Extinction Rebellion.

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In 2014 a collection of almost 500 private pictures of various celebrities were disseminated online. Nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jessica Brown Findlay, Kaley Cuoco, and Kirsten Dunst were shared on a number of image-hosting sites, after Apple’s iCloud system was hacked.

Five men have been convicted of the hack over the past five years, with the most recent being sentenced to 34 months in prison earlier this year.

With reporting by Todd Garrin, Yahoo TV