Confusion surrounds an online threat against actress Emma Watson in response to a gender equality speech she made at the United Nations.

The Harry Potter star and UN women's ambassador delivered an impassioned speech over the weekend at the launch of the UN's HeForShe campaign, which calls for men to support women in striving for gender equality.

Users of the online community 4chan, which previously leaked private nude photos of female celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton, then created a thread linking to a webpage called "EmmaYouAreNext.com".

The page showed a photo of Watson with a clock which was assumed to be counting down to the time nude photos of her would be posted.

Social media users rallied behind Watson in condemning the threats and blaming 4chan users for the website.

But it now appears to have been a stunt by Rantic, which describes itself as a social media marketing enterprise.

The redirected page now shows a message reading "shutdown4chan" and casting the whole affair as an attempt to prevent more photos from being leaked.

However the so-called enterprise Rantic may be a hoax itself.

Business Insider Australia reported that Rantic was run by a group of hoaxers known as SocialVEVO, who were responsible for a similar hoax announcement last year about a character from television show Family Guy.

Rantic claims on its website that it is not associated with SocialVEVO.

The EmmaYouAreNext website is hosted on the same server as Rantic.com as well as a fake news site called Fox Weekly, which was among the first to share news of the nude photo leak threats.

It is not clear whether the aim of the hoax was actually to shut 4chan down or simply to drive traffic to the site.

Regardless, the #shutdown4chan hashtag gained some momentum on Twitter, but some users raised concerns that it aimed to eclipse conversation about Watson's gender equality speech.

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Watson's speech, made in New York on Saturday, spoke of the importance of gender equality for both men and women.

Men, I would like to give this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue, too. To date, I've seen my father's role as a parent being valued less by society. I've seen young men suffering from illness, unable to ask for help for fear it will make them less of a man. I've seen men fragile and insecure by what constitutes male success. Men don't have the benefits of equality, either. ... I want men to take up this mantle so their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from prejudice but also so their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human, too and in doing so, be a more true and complete version of themselves.

Watson has not yet responded publicly to the news that the threats were a hoax.

Editor's note September 25, 2014: An earlier version of this story suggested Rantic was a social marketing company aiming to shut down 4chan. Subsequent information has cast doubt on that interpretation.