Matt Ivester says JuicyCampus.com is not turning out quite like he imagined.

When the 2005 Duke alumnus founded the anonymous message board site in October 2007, he envisioned a place where college students could come together to discuss the same wacky, random occurrences that he experienced while he was an undergraduate. That and “lighthearted gossip.”

“I was just thinking back on my college days,” Ivester said. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to get a place to share these stories?'”

Regardless of Ivester’s intentions, what resulted was something different.

Users at various campuses have posted about the sexual exploits of students. They’ve posted people’s e-mail addresses and phone numbers. They’ve even posted, in graphic ways, about how much they hate the JuicyCampus itself, as well as its founder.

But despite all this, and a letter from Ivester stressing that “hate isn’t juicy,” Ivester said the site is ultimately the creation of its users.

“We leave it to the users to discuss things that interest them,” Ivester said.

And those users, whoever they may be, have a lot of leeway when it comes to what they can discuss.

The forums are organized by campus, and JuicyCampus has added more than 50 since it began. Although Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill have their own sections, N.C. State does not. Ivester said this may change in the future, as JuicyCampus is looking to expand to campuses where it is requested most by students. But because posts are anonymous, any user can post in any campus section.

Ivester said anonymity was an important consideration for a site like JuicyCampus.

“We didn’t want users to fear repercussions from their administrations,” Ivester said.

He pointed out however, that anonymity is a choice that the site makes available.

“We give people the option of being anonymous,” Ivester said. “People can sign their names on their posts — and people do.”

Ivester said user freedom is further enhanced by the JuicyCampus policy not to prescreen or monitor content. It also doesn’t delete posts except in cases of spam, posted contact information or copyright infringement.

Reasons for deletion however, don’t include libel. And according to Adam Goldstein, an attorney with the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., individuals who feel they’ve been libeled by the site don’t have much recourse.

That’s because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which stipulates that users or providers aren’t considered liable for postings by others.

“It was intended to give [Internet Service Providers] immunity for what their users do,” Goldstein said. “Before the World Wide Web took off to be where the action was, ISPs had their own message boards. If I’m AOL, I can’t police what 20 million people are doing.”

He said Section 230 has its roots in what he called a classic scenario in law about what happens when someone finds a man drowning in a lake. Someone who ignored the man’s cry for help commits no crime. But if that same person attempts to save the man and breaks the victim’s rib in the process, the would-be hero could be sued.

“You can stand by on the shore and watch him die,” Goldstein said. “If you do perform a rescue, you have an obligation to do it right.”

The policy for message boards was originally the same: police it thoroughly, or don’t police it at all.

“To Congress, this was a problem,” Goldstein said.

So lawmakers came up with the concept of “good faith actors” for the Internet in the form of Section 230.

“You’re not liable if you do it wrong,” Goldstein said. “It was an incentive to make the Web less like the Wild West.”

It would take a subpoena to get JuicyCampus to remove a post for reasons other than those they list explicitly. But because the posts are anonymous, Goldstein said it would be a heap of legal trouble to successfully remove a post.

“It’s an awful big investment of time and effort,” Goldstein said.

Ivester said although JuicyCampus will comply with all lawful subpoenas, his site hasn’t received any to date.

Student message boards in general are no stranger to controversy, especially at N.C. State.

The Wolf Web, a message board site catering to N.C. State students that is unaffiliated with the University, was founded in 2000 by an NCSU alumnus. The site requires a Unity e-mail address to sign up, unless users pay a fee for a premium account. Although this e-mail address is not posted publicly, users must log in with a username and password.

Since it’s inception, TWW users have pulled pranks on local news stations, skewed national athletic polls and were accused by some of the same local news station of featuring racism and hate speech.

Regardless of the bad press however, the site has more than 30,000 registered users and typically registers more than 200,000 page views daily.

Wolf Web users such as Marilyn Hall, a junior in animal science, said JuicyCampus isn’t that good of a site compared to The Wolf Web.

“The Wolf Web is a site that caters to N.C. State students. JuicyCampus is all over the place,” Hall said. “It’s not really much a community.”

She said that lack of community is mostly due to the anonymous nature of the posts on JuicyCampus. Hall also said the site lacks additional features, like The Wolf Web’s Classifieds forum, which she said she uses often.

Hall said JuicyCampus is “too anonymous,” and that lack of accountability can be damaging.

“You can say anything about anybody,” Hall said. “You can hurt someone’s reputation.”

And she said because it’s just a gossip site, there’s nothing really useful to come back for.

“If they did make one for N.C. State, I wouldn’t go to it,” Hall said. “[Users] would just lose interest.”

But Ivester said JuicyCampus doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon. He said the site doesn’t release traffic statistics, although analysis site Compete.com reports more than 240,000 visits for the month of February.

“It’s way beyond what I ever hoped for,” he said. “We’re working to keep up.”