Charities turn down money from remorseful Reddit users

Apparently guilt-stricken users of the website Reddit are trying to donate money to good causes, but no one seems to want their cash.

A Redditor, as users of the news-sharing website are called, on Sept. 1 urged other Reddit users to give money to the Prostate Cancer Foundation to ease their consciences for looking at the naked photos of female celebrities that hackers unleashed on the Internet the previous day. The pictures first showed up on the website 4chan and spread to Reddit, Twitter and other sites, according to website Mashable.

The charity was supposedly chosen because one of the actresses involved in the hack, Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence, made donations to support prostate cancer research.

But the foundation wasn't interested, and on Sept. 2 firmly made its views known and returned the $6,000 that had been raised.

“We would never condone raising funds for cancer research in this manner. Out of respect for everyone involved and in keeping with our own standards, we are returning all donations that resulted from this post,” the foundation said in a notice on its website.

Redditors then tried to raise money for Water.org, a not-for-profit devoted to providing clean drinking water, but were again rebuffed. Mashable reported Water.org shut down its donations page Sept. 3.

A Reddit user summed up the situation in a comment: “Guys, we're literally worse than cancer.”