AutoAdmit
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Type of site
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Internet forum |
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| Available in | English |
| Owner | Jarret Cohen |
| Created by | Jarret Cohen |
| Website | http://www.autoadmit.com |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Required |
| Launched | 2004-03-17 |
| Current status | Active |
AutoAdmit, also known as Xoxohth, is a website for prospective and current law students and lawyers. Its largely unmoderated law school message board is now the only active section, though it previously featured pages for undergraduates, business students, and graduate school. The message board, which bills itself as "the most prestigious law school discussion board in the world", has drawn the attention and criticism of some in the legal community and the media for its lack of moderation of offensive and defamatory content.
AutoAdmit, originally named Xoxohth, was founded in early 2004 by Jarret "rachmiel" Cohen. It was programmed in PHP from scratch by Cohen and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student under the moniker "Boondocks" in order to emulate the old Allaire Forums software the Princeton Review message boards used. AutoAdmit's first users were dissatisfied with changes made to the Princeton Review message board in March 2004, such as stricter moderation of discussions and the abandonment of the message board's popular tree format in favor of a vBulletin-type format.
The website was the inspiration for a 2007 call for papers by the Yale Law Journal on the topic of anonymous internet speech.
On March 11, 2005, Brian Leiter of the University of Texas at Austin accused AutoAdmit on his blog of being "a massive forum for bizarre racist, anti-semitic, and viciously sexist postings, mixed in with posts genuinely related to law school". This provoked the AutoAdmit administrators to suggest that Leiter had "proactively searched" for lewd content on the website.
On March 1, 2007, ABC News profiled two Yale Law School students who alleged that harassing and defamatory comments had been posted about them on AutoAdmit. On March 7, 2007, the Washington Post published a front-page article featuring AutoAdmit that reported similar allegations and raised questions regarding freedom of speech and anonymity. On March 19, 2007, a Wall Street Journal editorial titled "Trash Talk" by Elizabeth Wurtzel criticized the AutoAdmit law message board as a forum of "mean-spirited" gossip.
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