Yik Yak has returned — and so have reports of cyberbullying, students say; The Record by Recorded Future, February 18, 2022

Emma Vail , The Record by Recorded Future; Yik Yak has returned — and so have reports of cyberbullying, students say

"Yik Yak, an anonymous social media app that was shuttered in 2017 after coming under fire for facilitating cyberbullying, was resurrected last year with an emphasis on new protective measures including anti-bullying guardrails. But students and watchdog groups are already reporting instances of abuse, and say that the new safeguards aren’t enough to stop people from using the app for cyberbullying. 

The app’s targeted consumers are college and high school students, allowing users to post or ‘Yak’ anonymously to others within a 5-mile radius. First launched in 2013 by Furman University students Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington, the app experienced a rollercoaster of initial success followed by sharp criticism that would lead to its demise in 2017. 

Advertised to be a safer and welcoming space, the app relaunched in August of 2021. New measures were put in place to ensure user safety including a downvote system. Posts that get 5 downvotes by other users are immediately removed from the platform. Yik Yak has implemented a one-strike-and-you’re-out policy that will ban the user from the app if the “violation is serious,” as stated on the website."

The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak, the Anonymous Messaging App; New York Times, May 27, 2017

Valeriya Safronova, New York Times; The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak, the Anonymous Messaging App

"At the end of that year, Mr. Droll and Mr. Buffington laid off 60 percent of their employees, and last month, they shut down the operation, selling off intellectual property and employee contracts to Square Inc., a mobile payment company, for $1 million. A few months earlier, Hive, a college-based chat app with a similar color scheme to Yik Yak’s, popped up in the iTunes and Google Play stores, with Mr. Buffington in one of the screenshots. Whether it was an attempt at reinvention under the Yik Yak umbrella or a side project is unclear, but it is no longer available...

Morgan Hines, who will start her fourth year at Northeastern University in Boston this fall, never encountered nastiness on Yik Yak. “I thought it was funny,” she said. “It formed a lot of camaraderie between students. There would be random shout-outs to things happening on campus, like people who are attractive or being annoying in the library, or a fire alarm going off at 4 a.m.”

But Ms. Hines criticized Yik Yak’s hyper-localization. “Yik Yak was for pockets of people on campus,” she said. “If the fire alarm went off at 4 a.m., it only went off at your building, so no one else will give it a thumbs-up.”

That hyper-localization is also what made the cases of harassment particularly galling. Ms. Musick, one of the plaintiffs, said, “With Yik Yak, in the back of your mind, you know they’re not from around the world or other parts of the state, they’re right there in your classroom, in your dining hall. On a campus with 4,500 students, that’s a pretty small group of people. This isn’t some creepy guy in his mom’s basement in Indiana.”"

Wildly Popular App Kik Offers Teenagers, and Predators, Anonymity; New York Times, 2/5/16

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Richard Perez-Pena, New York Times; Wildly Popular App Kik Offers Teenagers, and Predators, Anonymity:

"...experts in Internet crime caution that the app is just one of many digital platforms abused by all manner of criminals, from small-time drug dealers to terrorists.

But law enforcement officials say Kik — used by 40 percent of American teenagers, by the company’s own estimate — goes further than most widely used apps in shielding its users from view, often making it hard for investigators to know who is using it, or how. (Yik Yak is another popular app under fire for its use of anonymous messages.)...

Founded in 2009 and based in Canada, Kik aspires to become the Western version of WeChat, the hugely successful messaging service in China that offers free texting, e-commerce and content delivery. Its main appeal is privacy and anonymity: The app is free, and allows people to find strangers and communicate with them anonymously, through a user name."