University gossip site shuttered after salacious comments, classist remarks

Library Whispers had 1,000 comments in its first week.

A student-run Cambridge University website meant to be an innocent exchange between frequenters to the school’s library devolved into a “forum of hate” brimming with disparaging comments, forcing Cambridge students to pull the plug.

Library Whispers, a Twitter-style blog inviting anonymous comments about campus goings on, was shut down this week after the site was flooded with the “worst sort of bullying and abusive messages,” Oliver Rees, a Library Whispers cofounder, wrote in a message to the blog’s readers.

The furor over the Britain-based Library Whispers was similar to controversy caused by an American college gossip Juicy Campus, which shut down in February 2009 after 18 months of operation.…Read More