Rumor Has It

The site's 24-year-old founder, Duke University alumnus Matt Ivester, thinks it's all very natural. Social networking has moved online. Shouldn't gossip be a part of that?

"People talk about us being the opposite of Facebook and MySpace," notes Ivester, who says the site gets tens of thousands of hits a day. "We're completely anonymous. There are no profiles. We're filling that void. . . . People love celebrity gossip, and in many ways what we're doing is changing from Hollywood celebrities to campus celebrities."

This may be a vainglorious claim on Ivester's part, but Internet gossip might be a tempting venture for someone searching for "some kind of false and illusory prima donna status," as college senior Gregory N. Wolfe, 21, worded it in a column about JuicyCampus this year for the Cornell Daily Sun. Wolfe thinks JuicyCampus, apart from its innocuous ramblings, is damaging to communities because charges are unanswerable and viewed by thousands of people who have no reference point.

"At least in the typical telephone gossip you have source attribution, you know who's trustworthy," he says in a phone interview. "But you don't get this here, and you can't answer to it."

Instead of making the rounds in one social circle, Internet gossip jumps among them, and the information loses essential background information and credibility. "Traditional gossip occurs in a context, among people who know the person being gossiped about," writes George Washington University law professor Daniel Solove in his book "The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet." "But the Internet strips away that context, and this can make gossip even more pernicious."

Which is exactly what JuicyCampus does. Solove considers the site to be a paradigm of problems created when gossip and the Internet intersect: The site is not liable for anything users post, and the users are generally protected because they are anonymous. The rights of privacy and free speech engage in a confounding tango, and Solove thinks privacy is being compromised a little too much.

"I've thought long and hard to come up with an elegant solution . . . but there really isn't anything," he says. "There isn't a law that will make everyone play nice. At best the [existing] law can push norms in one direction or help raise awareness of a problem."

* * *

Gossip has always left a trail, but now its ability to be recorded is redefining the norm, especially in wired workplaces. Forty-three percent of employers monitor e-mails sent and received, according to a 2007 survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute, a training and consulting firm. If you're gossiping about a boss, co-worker or client, management may be reading over your shoulder. Many employers consider it a fireable offense, especially if the gossip involves the company and is communicated outside the workplace.

"Employees in their 20s or teens are so accustomed to communicating online, they tend to think nothing of expressing really personal thoughts or provocative opinions and gossip with people who they consider to be their closest online friends," says Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute. "But at this point there's absolutely no secret in cyberspace. If you go online to spread a rumor or gossip, you cannot expect it to be read only by your select group."

E-mails and instant messages are often stored. Flynn recommends you review your company's policy on e-mail and personal use of computers. And if you want to gossip, do it face-to-face in a place where you can't be overheard. Don't commit it to writing. Stick to the classic, virtuous pre-Internet model:

"Schedule a round of golf or take someone out to lunch," Flynn says.