JuicyCampus Gossip Site Targeted
Posted on: Saturday, 22 March 2008, 15:00 CDT
HARTFORD -- The anonymous gossip site JuicyCampus.com is spreading "malignant and malicious falsehoods" about Yale University students on its message board, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal charged Friday.
A lawyer for Yale said Friday the university supports the attorney general. Blumenthal announced an investigation into the Los Angeles-based social-networking operation that could lead to civil charges against Juicycampus.com under the state's consumer protection law.
He said the site is fostering a wide variety of hate speech and appears to be operating in a manner that breaks its own rules of usage.
"JuicyCampus.com is different from other social-networking sites because of its absolute guarantee of anonymity and its refusal to provide information about people who post hateful, slanderous, abusive and offensive speech," Blumenthal said. "This Web site is filled with insults, taunts, slander based on race, gender, religion. It is filled with comments that are homophobic and anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic."
Blumenthal said that Yale officials are supporting his investigation, which is collaborating with New Jersey officials and other universities.
"Essentially what we're investigating is this Web site's failure to follow and enforce its own guarantees and promises to the public," Blumenthal said.
He has given JuicyCampus.com until April 11 to respond to seven major issues on its screening process, internal protocols and processes for dealing with violations of its stated rules. "Yale supports state Attorney General Blumenthal's investigation of JuicyCampus.com," Dorothy Robinson, Yale University's general counsel, said in a statement. "We are pleased that he is giving his attention to the protection of students from injurious harassment through this website."
On Thursday, The Yale Daily News reported that students and parents are pressuring the university's residential-college deans in an attempt to muzzle the gossip site.
The undergraduate newspaper reported that Yale's dean of student affairs has talked with Robinson about possibly banning the site from Yale's computer network and taking action against those who log onto JuicyCampus.
Blumenthal said that anyone with a computer can find his or her way to the Yale message board and post any slanderous remark about anyone.
The Yale Daily News quoted JuicyCampus founder Matt Ivester as saying he wanted a site where students could gossip without fear of consequences.
"It's a gossip site and we never said that it's not," he told the paper. "I guess we didn't realize how mean some people can be."
Ivester on Friday did not return a request for comment.
Source: Connecticut Post
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