It's incredible to me that you don't feel any responsibility for a platform that you created. What happens on the platform is shaped directly by the choices you make as its creator - to be anonymous or identifiable, what the topics of discussion are, whether moderation happens.
By allowing anonymous commentary, scraping every student's data and seeding the conversation around "rumors", you created an environment that is perfect for targeted harassment. You created the platform and maintained it; what happens on that platform is absolutely your responsibility.
I highly recommend that you take this opportunity to do some introspection and consider why so many people were upset.
Were there lots of people upset? Or was it a small number of people with power who were upset? Like, I'm not at all surprised by how this played out, but it's not clear that anyone was upset beyond some people who don't take well to criticism.
Say hypothetically 1000 people were having great fun using it to cyberbully 10 people. It’s impossible to say that it’s no big deal because 99% of users loved it, unless you know exactly how much the 1% hated it.
It's not just people with power. Even if he had taken care to conciliate people with connections, it would have eventually blown up by someone going to police directly.
If the thing directly impacts them then yes, it should get to ruin things for the rest. If you don't understand why that is desirable then somebody should make a website describing which NSFW websites you like to frequent to spook your future investors.
it's like a trolly problem where the main line is "status quo" but you can optionally pull a lever labelled "students who like anonymous internet rumoring get more of it and also some students are victimized"
I honestly think the "targeted harrasment" thing is completely overblown. i mean that was just a very very very small part of the site. like okay, maybe 3 people are getting hurt (which btw, they could js report and id take the post down), but over four thousand kids were also enjoying using the site right? like people would come up to me everywhere and say how much fun they're having etc.
Surprise surprise: the arrogant selfish child doesn't have empathy for anyone else.
If four thousand kids were all laughing at a rumor that you had a small dick, and every girl you were interested in laughed you out the door for the rest of your college career, would you really be like "it's ok, 4k people are having fun"?
I guarantee OP would be the guy calling the site operator and threatening to jump him.
By allowing anonymous commentary, scraping every student's data and seeding the conversation around "rumors", you created an environment that is perfect for targeted harassment. You created the platform and maintained it; what happens on that platform is absolutely your responsibility.
I highly recommend that you take this opportunity to do some introspection and consider why so many people were upset.