When right-wing and tabloid outlets published nude photos of former US representative Katie Hill last month, the images were easily distributed on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, using platform features intended to boost engagement and help publishers drive traffic to their websites. Together, those posts have been shared thousands of times by users and pages who collectively reach millions of followers.

Facebook and Twitter both prohibit sharing intimate photos without their subjects’ permission—what is called nonconsensual pornography, or revenge porn (a term many experts avoid, since it’s really neither). Facebook recently touted the power of its automated systems to combat the problem. And yet, when a member of Congress became the latest high-profile victim, both companies seemed unaware of what was happening on their platforms, or failed to enforce their own policies.

The images appeared—first on the conservative website RedState and then on DailyMail.com—alongside allegations that Hill had improper relationships with two subordinates: one with a campaign staffer, which the photos depicted and Hill later admitted, and another with a staffer in her congressional office, which would violate House rules and which Hill has denied. Days after the photos were published, and after the House Ethics Committee announced an inquiry, Hill resigned from Congress.

Leaving aside the merits of the allegations—and without dismissing their seriousness—the decision to publish the explicit photos should be considered a separate issue, one experts say crosses a line.

“There’s a difference between the public’s right to know an affair occurred and the public’s right to see the actual intimate photos of that alleged affair, especially when it involves a person who is not in the public eye,” says Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law and president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative.

Hill, who is in the middle of a divorce, has blamed the leak on her estranged husband, and said that she was “used by shameless operatives for the dirtiest gutter politics that I've ever seen, and the right-wing media to drive clicks and expand their audience by distributing intimate photos of me taken without my knowledge, let alone my consent, for the sexual entertainment of millions.” She declined to comment for this story through a representative.

"Click to View Image"

RedState, which is owned by the Salem Media Group (“a leading internet provider of Christian content and online streaming”), published one nude photo in a story on October 18, hiding it behind an additional link, “Click to view image — Warning: Explicit Image.” Anyone sharing the story to Facebook or Twitter, as many people eventually would, saw a rather unremarkable wire photo of Hill in a blue blazer.

DailyMail.com took a different approach a few days later. For its first story about Hill on October 24, it chose the same image to show up on both Twitter and Facebook, as well as in search engine results: a collage made with four different photos of Hill, the largest of which appears to depict her naked. It’s a cropped version of the first photo you see in the actual story.

It’s also against all those platforms’ rules.

Facebook considers an image to be “revenge porn” if it meets three conditions: the image is “non-commercial or produced in a private setting;” it shows someone “(near) nude, engaged in sexual activity, or in a sexual pose;” and it’s been shared without the subject’s permission. Facebook says that in those cases, it will always take the image down.

Being somewhat familiar with Facebook’s community standards, I had a few questions about DailyMail.com’s strategy when I noticed it the following week. The tabloid had repurposed the same nude photo in another collage, this time to accompany a story about Hill announcing her resignation from Congress on October 27. DailyMail.com shared the news and the nude photo with its 16.3 million followers on Facebook later that day.