“If people are going to use it, might as well make it.”
Those are the words of College of Engineering Sophomore Justin Doody, who until today was the anonymous founder of RateBU.com, a new website that has swept through BU’s campus and gained over 1,160 users since being launched on Friday afternoon.
The story of how Doody got the idea for RateBU and how the Quad found him all comes back to Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. About a month ago, Doody and some friends saw The Social Network, a film about how Zuckerberg created Facebook, the now-ubiquitous social networking site that dominates the online lives of most college students. In the film, before he programs Facebook the young New Jersyan creates Facemash, a site that allows Harvard students to rate girls against each other. When Doody saw the concept on the silver screen, he decided to bring a similar idea to BU:
“Me and some friends just saw it [Facemash] and were like, ‘wow, we could make this’,” said Doody. “We knew the concept wasn’t unique at all, but it was still a lot of fun. Everyone I talked to about it was just like, ‘yeah, you should do that.'”
In the film, Zuckerberg gets in trouble because he hacks into private servers to grab photos of the girls. Doody came up with an ironic workaround that he hopes will keep him out of trouble: ask users to upload photos. From Facebook.
“Everything on this site is user generated, I’m not adding any of these girls. I let the users do that, and then I just approve it or whatever,” he said. “So I mean, all the photos on the site come from Facebook.”
The prospect of strangers being able to upload photos onto a website so that people can judge them has some of the site’s “early adopters” on edge. Kara Korab (CGS ’14), a Quad photographer whose friends found her on the site Sunday morning, said she thought being in the site’s top girls would be hard to handle. “I can’t imagine how people in top 15 people feel. I don’t know how I’d feel up there. I feel like they’re really exposed.”
“I would have liked to have been notified that I was put on this website,” said Adriana Alcivar (CGS ’13), who was one of the top five women on the website as of Sunday night. “Whoever wanted to do it just did it.”
Casey Prusher (CAS ’13), a Quad copy editor whose photo was found on the site during our investigation was similarly upset. “Whether or not it’s legal, it feels like someone took my information. I’m unwillingly being looked at and possibly being defamed or disparaged on a site I don’t condone,” she said.
Doody did not seem as concerned.
“I didn’t maliciously try to do this,” he said. “I think people are going to do this no matter what. I just created something that’s a little more public and visible as opposed to just like, gossiping at lunch or whatever.” Doody also noted that many of the girls on the site had uploaded photos of themselves, and that more than half of the site’s users at the time of publication were female.
However, Doody was initially unwilling to be subject to the same visibility he subjected his site’s girls to. As of Sunday, Doody had chosen to remain anonymous. The founder did not post his name on the website, used an anonymous contact form on the site, and entered in fake WHOIS data when he registered the domain, which is of questionable legality itself, especially if the use of the domain is determined to be illegal.
On the site’s “Legality” page, Doody quotes Facebook’s terms of service to justify the legality of uploading girls’ photos onto his site:
For now though here is an excerpt from facebooks terms:
“4. When you publish content or information using the “everyone” setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture).”
Also don’t forget that this is a user generated website. This sites concept comes from the site FaceMash featured in The Social Network Movie. The problems FaceMash ran into included breach of security, because Zuckerburg hacked into confidential servers, which isn’t a factor here. He also faced violation of individual privacy rights because the pictures came from a private source. The source of photos on this site somewhat ironically is facebook which clearly states that once you post pictures and other material online you are giving up some of your rights.
How right he was.
In an even more ironic twist, the Quad was able to ascertain the founder’s identity within an hour of first discovering the site through, you guessed it, Facebook. We found a post, accessible to anyone in the BU Facebook network, that Doody made on a friend’s wall. In the post, he asks his friend to check out the RateBU site. Another one of his friends asks if the site is public, and recommends a marketing tactic: posting references to the site on likealittle.com.
From there, the Quad got in contact with Doody, again using Facebook, who admitted to founding the site and consented to being interviewed, acknowledging that his name was going to get out eventually.
So we asked why, if that were the case, he chose to launch the site anonymously at all. His answer: “I just wanted to see how reception was before people knew that it was me. That’s really it. I think most people would do it anonymously, if they were making it.”
That reception has been mixed. Doody claims to have received only 10 negative emails from his over 1,000 users. The Quad had no trouble finding women who were upset, despite the text at the top of the website that tells girls “please don’t take the site too seriously or as an insult in any way.”
Alcivar said that when she first saw the site, she was not yet on it, but thought right away, “I hope my picture doesn’t come on this site. I don’t really want to be on this site.” When her photo did appear, Alcivar admitted to being surprised. “It didn’t even cross my mind that I would be on it,” she said. “And I didn’t want to be on it.”
She said the site sends a bad message about BU. “It’s like, all of the girls at BU are just kind of like a piece of ass and not really taken seriously. I think that’s what this site is kind of embodying. It is degrading. We’re at BU, it’s a really good school, but like, BU is known for, apparently, attractive girls.” She added, “I just wish my photo wasn’t on there.”
Prusher also thought the site reflected poorly on the school. “I think BU’s a better school than that. I think it’s like, it’s just an ugly mark on our student body.”
Prusher and Alcivar are considering asking for their photos to be taken down, and both Prusher and Korab hope the site will eventually die out.
Doody, on the other hand, is already looking ahead. “BU is sort of the test one, to see how it goes, and if I do face any major problems. But I have thought about definitely expanding,” he said.
Is the next Mark Zuckerberg going to come from BU? Doody admitted to admiring the Facebook founder, scruples and all.
“He came up with this idea, and Facebook of course, so yeah,” Doody said. “I think everyone would like to be the world’s youngest billionaire.”
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Justin, you can’t say for sure what employers would or would not do. Some of the photos uploaded to the site are of girls bending over showing ample amounts of cleavage, etc. If girls uploaded their own pictures then kudos, but I’m making the point that you can never be sure that the picture is coming from its owner. Could you put a little more security on the site?
I’m pretty much outraged. I protect all of my pictures on Facebook. Every one of those pics are only able to be viewed by my facebook friends, so Doody’s quote of the Facebook privacy policy do not apply to me, yet I’m getting continuous messages from my friends about my picture being on there. There is a reason I keep my facebook very private and only accept people I know personally as friends. It’s one thing to submit yourself to rating, but I did not, and do not want my picture all over this website.
well then apparently one of your “friends” put you up there. Reconsider who you approve…
Employers cannot find a student on RateBu. It’s not possible.
They can google search the and it won’t come up.
They can’t access ratebu because they don’t have a BU email account.
They wouldn’t even bother going to rateBu because odds are, they haven’t heard of it.
Even if they hacked the entire system, saw all the girls, somehow managed to guess their last name, they still wouldn’t judge them because someone else might’ve posted them to the site.
You’re in way more danger to prospective employees by having drunk photos of yourself tagged on facebook.
Still would like to have a media or privacy lawyer weigh in on RateBU. /2010/12/05/ratebu/ Any takers? DM or email staff at buquad dot com
@buquad You should contact Professor T. Barton Carter. He’s a communication law professor at LAW/COM.
@buquad I would also be very interested in hearing what a lawyer says.
Don’t be a tool. There’s no class action suit to be formed here. No one’s been defamed or suffered emotional damage.
im a bu student. if my picture is posted on this website, i will file a class action suit against him, i will take all this little shit has to offer and then some- i will single handedly ruin his life: hope your reading this doddy
I agree, I would do the same. First thing I would do is go to the administration, sooner or later someone is gonna get up in BU’s business about it they’ll get involved. This makes our school look bad.
First, I applaud your attempt to be anonymous through lack of basic punctuation, basic grammar, and inability to remember the name of the guy who founded the site: “Doody” (It’s at the top of the article, in case you didn’t notice). Secondly, good luck getting anyone to file a class action lawsuit against Doody: for a class-action lawsuit, you need a “large group of people” to join you and various other conditions to be met, including for people to have been “in some way injured by the actions of a company,” but since you’re trying to say something half intelligent, you can change “company” to “individual.” Good luck with filing for damages; if you want to figure out what you’re really trying to say, check out wikipedia; it’s a great site for learning things! Finally, you may not have noticed this, but profile pictures on facebook are no longer private property and are available to anyone on the internet regardless of privacy settings. As such, you no longer have any claim to them or any damages you may incur from your pictures being used by third-person parties.
All I can say is, if you do try to sue: Good. Luck.
first, learn how to spell and use proper grammar
A class action law suit would do nothing against Justin. You would not ruin his life, because he’s done nothing to you directly or intentionally. All you would do is lose a bunch of money in a court case that would take up time that could be used for real crimes in the world. He simply made a website that the other students of BU gave power to. If you’re really that passionate about not being on the site, then just email him asking it be taken down. I doubt he would be that opposed to it. And make all of your pictures private and a profile picture that doesn’t show your face clearly and/or entirely. This really shouldn’t be as serious as people are making it out to be, but if you chose to make it this outrageous, then I wish you the best of luck in whatever it is you’re trying to achieve..
Gabe, I don’t know a whole lot about journalism or fineness. Still, I’m going to say that this is journalism at its finest. Excellent article.
thank you for representing our school with such class and prestige justin doody. i could not be prouder to be associated with such a shallow, narcissistic school. GO BU.
BU gets insulted in The Social Network and Justin Doody goes and copies the fail of an idea represented in it. hahaha
Aside from being entirely against the objectification this website is perpetuating, my main problem is with everyone saying that women at BU should blame themselves for not changing their Facebook privacy settings when they find an unauthorized picture up on this website. It’s a respect issue; why should we have to take preventative measures against this sort of thing? It just shouldn’t happen to begin with! And the fact that Doody is making a “male version” of the site doesn’t offset the current “female version.” It’s objectification, bottom line, and that should never be applauded.
Beautiful people, male and female, have always been applauded and hopefully will continue to be.
You guy’s have been cited back on the Mugar Common Blog page! I apologize for not attributing you earlier; totally not following my own criticisms.
No problem, thanks for the link and the great article!
hahaha i find it funny that people are so mad about this site. Justin has not done anything wrong, he simply followed the law. Secondly i dont understand the people who point out that he is copying an unoriginal failed idea. He states clearly on his page that he knows that this is not his idea and that he created it just for fun!! Ratebu.com says a lot about the media this day and age, we all have agreed to term and conditions of random websites without reading what the agreement truly say. Justin did not do anything not legal. Ratebu.com might be morally wrong but then again morality and the law dont always go hand in hand. I say suck it up people, you did this to yourself, haha at least Justin was kind enough to not have a top 15 ugliest girls on campus section!!! 🙂
Point by point:
“Justin has not done anything wrong, [sic] he simply followed the law.”
Doing something illegal =/= doing something wrong. “Morality and law dont [sic] always go hand in hand”, as you say later. You need to show he hasn’t done anything wrong.
“Secondly i [sic] dont [sic] understand the people who point out that he is copying an unoriginal failed idea. He states clearly on his page that he knows that this is not his idea and that he created it just for fun!!”
Point taken. But the real question is whether or not he’s doing something wrong here. Doing something wrong just for fun only makes your conduct worse.
“Ratebu.com says a lot about the media this day and age, [sic] we all have agreed to term [sic] and conditions of random websites without reading what the agreement [sic] truly say.”
Yet somehow I doubt RateBU is awesome privacy-law performance art.
“Justin did not do anything not legal [“illegal”]. Ratebu.com might be morally wrong [sic] but then again morality and the law dont always go hand in hand.”
The dissonance between these two statements is almost enough to give me a stroke. Also, who here is more upset that Doody might be breaking the law than that he might be doing something wrong? Who are you arguing against?
“I say suck it up people, you did this to yourself”
I love the smell of victim-blaming in the morning.
“haha [sic] at least Justin was kind enough to not have a top 15 ugliest girls on campus section!!!”
You’re terrible. If you’re sincere you’re terrible and if you’re a troll you’re worse. I’m glad there’s no more of your post to refute.
Looking this over, I shouldn’t have bothered putting those [sic]s all over the place. I made myself look pedantic by putting them there at all, and I made myself look careless by missing the rest.
dear Scott,
The fact that you took time to write an essay on my comment is actually faltering.ooo and the fact that you went back to comment saying “Looking this over, I shouldn’t have bothered putting those [sic]s all over the place. I made myself look pedantic by putting them there at all, and I made myself look careless by missing the rest.” man thats like the cherry that tops it!!! Thanks :). Also im not arguing for any side. My main comment was that what he did is not illegal, tho it might be morally wrong!! and the the section in which i said we should be careful in this day and age to watch what we do online had nothing to do with the privacy setting of ratebu.com!! when was the last time you actually looked at facebooks privacy setting. i bet you have an account too, so who are you to know the setting of ratebu.com. finally you said ” You’re terrible. If you’re sincere you’re terrible and if you’re a troll you’re worse. I’m glad there’s no more of your post to refute.” now is that nice? i never said anything bad about a particular person did i? Im hurt 🙁 Scott.
*flattering
A lot of commenters here are saying that RateBU is technically legal, but I’m pretty sure that’s not true. It IS true that the Facebook ToS states that all content published using the “everyone” setting can be used by anyone, even people off Facebook. However, it does not say the same for content that is published using any other privacy setting. So I think it’s safe to assume that private content is still protected by copyright and privacy laws. There’s also the fact that, as other commenters have mentioned, any photo from any place can be submitted to ratebu.com — not just Facebook photos. In that case, RateBU’s Legal page isn’t even relevant, which is extremely problematic.
Wait, I’m confused…does this site just automatically grab photos from Facebook or do people just upload the photos themselves (or “connect” with Facebook)?
Sure, it may be “wrong” and “degrading” to rate girls like that, but if you chose to post your pictures, then you shouldn’t complain. Also, if you’re so worried about your photos being out in public, then you should either change your privacy settings on Facebook or don’t have pictures on it. You’re just putting yourself out there, prone to stuff like this.
Whether or not Doody did something illegal, I’m not sure. The only thing I’m sure of is that some people are way overreacting about this and should chill.
People can upload pictures themselves from anywhere, not just Facebook. The privacy-settings argument doesn’t convince me.
I agree that you shouldn’t complain if you uploaded the pictures to RateBU yourself. However, your post is vague on whether or not “post” means “to RateBU” or “to Facebook”. If the latter, then you’re blaming the victim. The moral responsibility for the theft (the unconsenting use) of a person’s image lies on the person who stole it, not on the person who was careless with it.
Finally, it is absolutely wrong and degrading to rate someone like this–that is, publically–without their consent. Get rid of those scare quotes.
Jen might be right, but either way.. say these girls all have the strictest possible privacy settings- then it’s most likely their friends submitting the photos. You have to take some responsibility for your own privacy. Don’t accept or send friend requests from/to people you don’t actually know. Don’t put pictures online that you don’t want to get out. Don’t do stupid things in the presence of a camera, whether you know the owner or not. It’s 2010 and we’re college students, does this sort of thing really need to be repeated?
Also, I googled some of the people quoted in this and other articles. I easily found twitter and facebook accounts, and let me just say, some of you might want to make your twitter accounts private if you’re so concerned about what people think.
Thank you Northeastern student!
I completely agree.