The slogan for the anonymous social media site Yik Yak reads “Find your herd,” but does Yik Yak unite college campuses, or divide them?
Source: Theo Weismann, Campus Life Editor
Founded in 2013, shuttered in 2017, and relaunched in 2021, Yik Yak has gained popularity at many universities, including Sacred Heart.
Students at SHU use Yik Yak like many other university students do, sharing memes and jokes about the school, news about the latest parties, and information about classes and tests.
“I love posting on the Yak,” said sophomore Blake Mattesitch. “It’s great to make jokes about our campus and the various goings on, I’ve gotten thousands of likes sharing memes on there.”
However, there’s a dark side to anonymity. The freedom to say anything you want without identification or any trace of previous activity enables troubling content to be shared.
According to the New York Times, campuses such as the University of Missouri, Middlebury College, Virginia Tech, and Michigan State have had Yik Yak pages sharing harmful content such as racism, public shaming, and even terrorist threats. These controversies contributed to Yik Yak’s first shutdown in 2017.
Since its revival in 2021, Yik Yak has put in new guidelines against such content. Their website states, “If someone bullies another person, uses hate speech, makes a threat, or in any way seriously violates the Community Guardrails or Terms of Service (TOS), they can be immediately banned from Yik Yak, One strike and you’re out.”
Still, this hasn’t completely dispelled these issues.
“I have seen some very alarming posts on our school’s Yik Yak,” said senior Liam Conway. “There are posts that insult the cafeteria workers there, posts that demean and humiliate fellow students, as well as racist and sexist content on there. It makes me sad that there are people among our student body who feel the need to share garbage such as this.”
Yik Yak claims that TOS violations will result in immediate permanent bans; however, this is not true. They issue temporary bans of 24-48 hours, with no other consequence to the user. There is also no moderation team, meaning posts will only get taken down once they are reported.
“I once posted something that name-dropped my friend Blake, and it wasn’t taken down for hours,” said sophomore Matt Butt. “When Blake did report it, it was taken down in 94 seconds, and I was given a 24-hour ban. We tried this over and over again with the same 24-hour ban instituted every time.”
Gossip and falsehoods also spread rapidly.
“There was one night when that app had a million people claiming Billy Joel had died,” said sophomore Andrew Raber. “It took one Google search to disprove that, but the next day you had people believing it was true still”.
“It’s scary how quickly something like that spreads. It was everywhere, and everyone discussing it was anonymous,” said sophomore Alex Parisi.
Since its revival in 2021, Yik Yak has reemerged as a fixture of college campuses, but the problems that killed it in 2017 have not fully gone away.
