“You are part of a generation that is constantly having its privacy eroded,” Matt Ivester, the founder of JuicyCampus.com, told students on Tuesday night. The speech, which was inspired by the controversial launch of the Georgetown forum of Juicy Campus early this semester, was organized by the Lecture Fund and held in the Intercultural Center auditorium.
The site allows users to comment anonymously about other students and has irritated some who claim it promotes libel. Ivester launched Juicy Campus in October of 2007, a few years after graduating from Duke University, intending it to be a place to share college stories.
Juiced up: the founder of JuicyCampus.com spoke in the ICC on Tuesday. (LEXIE HERMAN)
“Obviously, it’s moved away from that a little bit,” he said.
Juicy Campus’s success can be attributed in part, he said, to a growing celebrity gossip culture.
“There are campus celebrities that people are fascinated with,” he said.
If any of those campus celebrities are mad about what’s written about them on Juicy Campus, they have little recourse. The law makes Ivester immune to prosecution for comments made by Juicy Campus users, and mandates only that Ivester take down posts that a court deems libel.
“Our policy is the same as Google’s,” he said, referring to Google’s policy toward libel accusations against blogs it hosts.
Ivester said he doesn’t run Juicy Campus to make money and that his company is currently not making a profit. Rather, he said he runs Juicy Campus to promote free speech at college.
“I believe very fundamentally in providing a forum of speech for college students,” he said.
After Ivester’s speech, Georgetown Professor Ned Moran read questions submitted by audience members. One student asked Ivester if he thought JuicyCampus could ruin Georgetown’s sense of community.
“I think a really strong community can get over Juicy Campus,” Ivester said.
According to Ivester, Juicy Campus plans to expand to more schools and divide posts into different categories, including sections for sex and drinking.
