Trash talk to thousands at once, anonymously

By Charlotte Hsu

Thursday, April 10, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Lounging in dorm rooms or waiting in line to grab coffee, students swap stories, whispering about who slept with whom, who got a bit too trashed the other night, who needs to spend more time at the gym.

And now, by putting a modern twist on the age-old tradition of talking smack, a new Web site is giving students a place to make public the types of rumors they’ve long traded privately.

JuicyCampus, launched in October, has become popular in the past few weeks at UNLV, one of about five dozen colleges with its own message board on the site.

The expletive-ridden digital forum allows anyone to read and post gossip incognito, which encourages malicious behavior, some researchers say.

“The buzz gets around that JuicyCampus is a place where you can really go to town anonymously,” said Richard Weiner, a media expert writing a book on gossip.

Take one UNLV posting, which garnered more than 1,000 views in five days. It begins, “So who is the biggest whore on our campus?”

The author singles out a student, first and last name, then continues: “That girl will sleep with any one who gives her the attention ... Typical slut.”

Another post lists the purported sexual partners of another student.

“It’s kind of crazy,” UNLV Student Body President Adriel Espinoza said of JuicyCampus, which is owned by Lime Blue, a Reno LLC. “It’s an online burn book, and I think it could get really nasty.”

Though some posts are jokes — Espinoza’s friend wrote about him on the site — others are hurtful, he said.

Several women targeted on the message boards expressed disgust with JuicyCampus but refused to comment for this story.

Victims have little legal recourse. U.S. law, for the most part, does not hold sites such as JuicyCampus responsible for the content users create.

Legal experts said authors of defamatory comments could be held liable — if they could be identified. According to JuicyCampus’ privacy and tracking policy, though the site tracks users’ Internet Protocol addresses, which identify individual computers, its logs “do not directly associate IP addresses with specific posts.”

Though student leaders elsewhere have condemned the site, and the University of Virginia’s student council voted to do so, Espinoza said he has no plans to lead such a charge at UNLV. Officials at the school are asking students to be mindful of what they post.

At some colleges, administrators think ignoring JuicyCampus is the best way to fight it. But anyone hoping that students will eventually tire of cybergossip could be disappointed.

“Gossip has been around forever, and as people spend more and more time on the Internet, gossip will move from the bars and water coolers to online. It’s not a passing fad,” JuicyCampus Chief Executive and founder Matt Ivester said in an e-mail.

Weiner agrees, saying each year’s freshman class brings a new market to exploit. He points out that JuicyCampus is just the latest addition to a vast Internet rumor mill that includes sites such as Don’t Date Him Girl, where women share dirt on men they’ve dated.

Jack Levin, a professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University in Boston who has researched gossip for many years, says rumors thrive at universities because students place great value on what their peers think.

“To be rejected by one’s friends is tantamount to getting the death penalty,” he said. “Whenever social relationships are that significant, spreading word about those relationships is also important.”

And gossip can be useful. Through informal office chitchat, for example, colleagues glean tidbits such as how long it really takes to get a promotion, Levin said. In the JuicyCampus equivalent of that scenario, several people on UNLV’s message board replied to questions about joining fraternities and sororities.

In an entry on JuicyCampus’ official blog titled “Hate isn’t juicy,” Ivester, a 2005 Duke University graduate, says the site is meant to be a place for “fun, lighthearted gossip, rather than a place to tear down people or groups.”

He appeals to users to “consider whether your post is entertaining or just mean, and whether using a person’s full name really adds value, or if it would be just as juicy as a blind item. Remember that words can hurt, and the people you are talking about are real.”

But the darker reality is that students can use JuicyCampus to “get sweet revenge” by damaging enemies’ reputations, Levin said.

JuicyCampus’ terms and conditions mandate that users agree not to post anything “unlawful, threatening, abusive, tortuous, defamatory, obscene, libelous, or invasive of another’s privacy.”

The attorneys general of Connecticut and New Jersey are investigating whether JuicyCampus is committing fraud by failing to enforce those and other rules.

A statement from JuicyCampus carried the following retort: “The position taken by the attorneys general that Web site operators can be liable for failing to censor potentially defamatory, mean-spirited and uncivil postings has been rejected by Congress and by dozens of courts.”

The Communications Decency Act of 1996 makes JuicyCampus and similar sites largely immune from being found liable for user-generated content.

A ruling last week by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed protections, saying the 1996 law did not grant Roommates.com immunity from prosecution in a fair housing case because the site steered users toward creating problematic content. Roommates.com required users — perhaps illegally — to identify their gender, sexual orientation and parental status, and used that information to match roommates.

The takeaway message is this: The extent to which a site helps users develop illegal content could affect whether it is immune to liability for that material.

Even with that ruling, JuicyCampus would “almost definitely not” be held liable for statements people make on its message boards, said Michael Fertik, chief executive and founder of ReputationDefender, which helps clients erase or “bury” inaccurate and hurtful material about themselves on the Web.

Robert Aalberts, a professor of legal studies at UNLV’s College of Business, thinks the Roommates case “has nothing to do with JuicyCampus.”

In the end, anonymous, digital vitriol might be something society will have to learn to accept.

The freedom to conceal one’s identity allows people to speak without fear of retaliation, said Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada.

He acknowledged that anonymity can spawn irresponsible speech. But if that speech is not defamatory, the best way to combat it is to speak out with a different opinion, he said.

And though many students might be tempted to keep quiet when they see their names on JuicyCampus, Levin advises victims to put up a defense.

“Once the dirt is spread,” he said, “it becomes a mudslide unless it’s attacked very quickly. People say, ‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire,’ and silence implies guilt.”