Colleges Fight Back Against Anonymous Gossip Sites

So here’s what free speech has come to on campus: “Name the freshman sluts!” an anonymous post demands on the Indiana University page of a multischool gossip site. So-and-so “has herpes!” proclaims an unsigned post on Texas Christian University’s page. Among the profundities on the University of Alabama page: “Frats = fags.”

Horny guys, lowbrow debates and run-of-the-mill spam all seem to be in abundant supply on CollegeACB.com (the acronym stands for Anonymous Confession Board). But what sets this site — and others like it — apart from the coarse commentary found on YouTube or, for that matter, a political blog are the personal attacks against private citizens, often with last names included, that leave victims with little recourse aside from demanding that the anonymous comments be taken down.

(See a video of the ACB founder.)

What used to be whispered on campuses is now broadcast, in the most cowardly way, for anyone with an Internet connection to see. Beverly Low, dean of first-year students at Colgate University, describes the phenomenon as an “electronic bathroom wall.” The posts — which are often suffused with racism, sexism and homophobia — can be so vicious and juvenile that Ben Lieber, dean of students at Amherst College, likens them to “the worst of junior high.”

And yet even the most élite universities are struggling with the problem of anonymous gossip sites. Some sites are homegrown and deal only with one school. Others are sprawling entities, catering to hundreds of schools and offering features like search capability and, at one enterprising site, the option to vote on how truthful an anonymous post is.

The biggest multischool site, JuicyCampus, was receiving thousands of hits a day when it folded in February — after advertisers pulled out. This happened around the time that two state attorneys general began investigating the site for possibly violating consumer-protection laws and its own terms of use. But wannabe sites are eager to replace the once mighty JuicyCampus. So eager, in fact, that the defunct site was paid by ACB to redirect traffic to the upstart gossip hub.

It may have worked. ACB logged a record 480,000 hits in one day in early November; a slow day brings half as much traffic, according to owner Peter Frank, a sophomore at Wesleyan University who runs ACB out of his dorm room. The 19-year-old English major defends the site as a “student-controlled discussion space where the communities dictate what’s talked about.” Though the site does not “call for salacious gossip,” he says, on a busy day he receives 40 requests to take down posts and “on a bad day, just a couple.”

He does not have moderators or police the site. But he follows up on complaints about individual posts. “If it says your name, we’ll take it off,” he says.

Hundreds of individuals and several schools have sent Frank requests to delete comments or even to remove a college from his site. For example, Washington and Lee University asked him in October to delete almost all threads about the school, but Frank refused. “I am not looking out for the school’s best interests,” he says. “I’m looking out for the students’ best interests.”

So colleges and universities have gone to war by other means. Students at North Carolina Central University urged their peers to boycott gossip sites. At Mount Holyoke College, where a localized gossip site generated a lot of hurt and anger, administrators held workshops to encourage students to talk things out face to face. Millsaps College went so far as to block access to JuicyCampus from its computers.

But schools must walk a fine line between protecting free speech and protecting students from one another. Liz Braun, Mount Holyoke’s dean of students, says that from an administrative standpoint, it’s a “very slippery slope.” Even at Wesleyan, administrators have to tread lightly. The school told Frank he could not use its servers for his business, but, says director of media relations David Pesci, “We have other students who are entrepreneurs on campus who have businesses, and quite frankly, as long as they are conducting those businesses within the laws assigned to those areas, there’s not much that we can get involved with.”

So far at least, the law is on Frank’s side. Although individuals can sue newspapers and other traditional-media outlets for making false or defamatory statements, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields website operators from liability for user-generated content, except for copyrighted materials like movies and music.

But that doesn’t mean anonymous commenters are home free. This fall, two former Yale law students settled a lawsuit they brought against several people the women claimed had defamed them in anonymous comments on a law students’ online discussion board. It took two years of tough litigation, but the women were able to identify some of the posters and obtain a settlement, the terms of which remain confidential.

“It’s true that the actual authors would potentially be liable for posting libel,” Frank says of ACB. “But libel is difficult to prove. I just really don’t see it happening, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” And what about Frank? “I’m untouchable,” he says.

See Peter Frank defend his business model.