Truth, lies and opinion have collided this academic year, as many AU students have begun using the social network app Yik Yak.
Since its launch in November 2013, students at more than 200 college campuses across the nation have successfully established Yik Yak communities. While it has almost been a year since the app was put on the market, AU students have started to use Yik Yak to express their thoughts and feelings anonymously.
With companies like Twitter and Facebook dominating the social networking market, Yik Yak has still managed to grow in popularity due to its unfiltered take on traditional social media. Unlike in other social media networks where every member makes a profile to showcase individual content, Yik Yak scraps every personal aspect and in return anonymously celebrates statuses.
The app’s privacy is what makes it unique, said Cam Mullen, Yik Yak’s lead community developer.
“By keeping your privacy and making it anonymous, it really levels the playing field between every Yak-er on campus,” Mullen said. “Yak transcends social circles and sends jokes and information to every single person in the area.”
Once a yak – the equivalent of a status on Facebook or a tweet on Twitter – is posted to the community-shared wall, others who have downloaded the app have the power to either up-vote, down-vote or comment on the yak. If more than five people downvote a post then it is automatically removed from the University’s public Yik Yak wall.
The app also features a Peek Section, which allows students of any college to look up and skim through other universities’ Yik Yak communities.
“When I open the app, I look for funny observations on campus and get disappointed when it’s the same thing over and over again,” said Camille Viollet, a sophomore in School of Communication.
While the app is a stream of shared community posts, its content varies throughout the day based on users who are using the app.
The result of this simple but limited system is a network that allows people to escape the responsibility that many social networking sites place on users. By giving up their individual identities, members of Yik Yak are able to post both true or false facts, no matter how controversial.
“We don’t collect much personal information about anyone. We don’t ask for your name, your number, or anything like that,” Mullen said. “When someone does break the rules, like targeting another Yak-er and bullying them, we can suspend users, read their posts and block the user forever.”
VIA YIK YAK/YIK YAK, LLC
Users of the app can report content by clicking on a yak and tapping the flag symbol on the top right of the screen. The threat of being reported, however, does not deter many users from posting statuses with sexual or racial content.
“From what I’ve observed, I don’t think it has a positive or a negative influence on AU,” said Eric Emerson, a sophomore in College of Arts and Sciences. “There are certainly some offensive things, but also a lot of innocent things and funny things. I think if you don’t take it too seriously, then it’s okay.”
While much of Yik Yak seems to be solely based on opinions, the app can also give rise to dangerous postings and false news. There have been reported threats against students and faculty on Yik Yak at schools like Pennsylvania State University, where a student was arrested on Oct. 13 for threatening to bring an assault weapon to campus in a Yik Yak post.
Yik Yak takes these threats seriously, according to Mullen.
“We have hot words running all the time, and a lot of threats have similar words whether it’s like ‘shoot up’ or ‘bomb,’” Mullen said. “Often when something comes up and it is posted, we’ll actually reach out to the school’s authorities and tell them before they even know.”
Although Yik Yak offers its users the anonymous liberty to express their thoughts and ideas to the public, it does not excuse its users from posting negative content. While the app’s official list of rules has policies against bullying and posting individual’s phone numbers, the guidelines of Yik Yak are also open to users posting racist or sexist statuses.
“Yik Yak is filled with one liners and jokes, but whenever something happens on campus the feed immediately starts talking about that and reflecting on it,” Mullen said. “You really get a pulse of what is happening on campus through Yik Yak, depending on where you are.”
thescene@theeagleonline.com
