Back in 2013, Yik Yak hit the app store and became a hit at college campuses across the country. The anonymous social media app skyrocketed in popularity, becoming the ninth most downloaded social media app in the United States at its peak, according to Failory.
But the app had issues. The biggest criticism was that because it was anonymous, it allowed hate speech and cyberbullying to spread quickly and without consequences.
The app began to lose popularity and engagement from its users, so in 2017 it was announced that the app would be shutting down.
After a four-year break, Yik Yak made its return to the app store. With new owners who bought the rights for the app in February, Yik Yak relaunched this past August.
How it works
The set-up of the app is fairly simple. All posts are anonymous, and anyone within a five-mile radius can see them. Each post has a 200-character limit. You can interact with people’s posts, aka “yaks,” through an upvote/downvote system, as well as through comments. Everyone is given a random emoji to post, which acts as the poster’s identifier.
The more upvotes that you get on a post, the higher your yakarma is. The more downvotes you get, the lower your yakarma is. Everyone starts off with 100 yakarma points, but no one else can see your yakarma score.
“Yakarma are points you’re awarded for engaging on Yik Yak,” the app says. “You get yakarma for yakking, commenting and receiving upvotes on both yaks and comments.”
There are two main pages on the app: “new” and “hot.” The new page has each yak listed in chronological order, and the hot page has yaks listed from highest upvotes to lowest upvotes.
All yaks display how long ago they were posted and how far away the person who posted it is from you.
How it’s changed
As for the issues of hate speech and cyberbullying, the new owners have transformed the way the app is set up and its community terms to make sure that Yik Yak isn’t a toxic environment.
“We’re committed to combating bullying and hate speech on the Yik Yak platform by any means necessary,” the company says on its website. “On the new Yik Yak, it’s against the Community Guardrails to post bullying messages or use hate speech, make threats or share anyone’s private information.”
The app is strictly enforcing these new rules. Any yak that gets five or more downvotes is automatically removed from people’s feeds, and anyone who is found posting hate speech will be banned.
“If someone bullies another person, uses hate speech, makes a threat or in any way seriously violates the Community Guardrails or Terms of Service, they can be immediately banned from Yik Yak. One strike and you’re out.”
How it’s used
Since its relaunch, Yik Yak has been very popular at UF. Users are active on the app at seemingly all hours of the day, and there is a lot of engagement between users on yaks.
“I love Yik Yak,” said Sarah Swetland, a 20-year-old sophomore at UF studying pre-pharmacy. “There’s a lot of great, funny content on there.”
Swetland said that she goes on the app every few days and that the yaks never disappoint.
“I just like how it’s a bunch of us posting relatable stuff one there,” she said. “It’s also really funny when there’s an inside joke that everyone’s posting about for one night.”
Swetland also said that she understands the concerns of those who say that the app could be a vessel for hate speech and cyberbullying.
“I think that when it’s anonymous, people don’t really think that there’s consequences for what they say,” she said. “People should definitely be careful about what they post, because you never know who’s going to see it.”
She also said, though, that she hasn’t seen any extreme examples of hate speech or cyberbullying on the app.
“I haven’t seen anything too bad on there,” she said. “I can see why people would be worried about spreading hate or bullying because of how the app’s set up, but there hasn’t really been anything that I can think of.”
Another concern with the app is the way it can easily spread misinformation, especially with how other social media platforms have dealt with “fake news” these past few years. Yik Yak doesn’t currently have any policies in place on posts with misinformation and with the anonymity of the platform, as there’s really no way to regulate it.
However, the app can also be used to talk about issues that are happening at UF and create meaningful discussions. It can be a way for students to unwind and joke around about the one thing they all have in common — being students at UF.
Yik Yak is only available on iOS users in the U.S., but the creators of the app said that they are planning to expand to more systems and countries around the world in the future.