Is it that the online gossipmongers think it’s just a joke? JuicyCampus.com, where students can “slime” each other, may have one upside: The site could be a good talking point for parents and teens to discuss what is and isn’t ethical treatment of peers online. “The content on JuicyCampus is identical to the banter heard in dorm rooms for centuries. But now the whole planet can listen in, including those being maligned, even as the speakers’ identities are better protected than ever,” the Washington Post reports. The site does not take responsibility for its content and is probably protected by the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which courts to date have found to shield Internet service providers from liability for the content that users post. “If the offending post is about you, too bad,” the Post adds, quoting site info as saying, “JuicyCampus does not remove content. We encourage you to shift your point of view….” It mentions one University of Virginia student who’d been “named on the site as sexually promiscuous” and who didn’t really want to know who named her as such but does worry “that having her name on the site could jeopardize the job she just landed with a government agency. She wishes the site didn’t exist but says nothing can be done….” [See also “Window on cyberbullying” and “Public humiliation on the social Web.”]
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