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The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

nytimes.com

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#71

Post by gaius »

gotothedoctor wrote: post #68
pitaa wrote: post #59

>two feminist groups and several former students filed a federal complaint accusing the University of Mary Washington...of failing to protect the female plaintiffs from cyber harassment... I am confused as to why anyone thinks its the University's duty to protect their students from "cyber harassment." I mean, I am aware of Title IX and all, I am just shocked at the amount of control, influence, and involvement into…

Are you really confused? Leaving the law & federal funding requirements aside, Universities seek to have successful graduates & thus it is in their best interest to provide an environment that equips their students to learn. Being harassed undermines these goals, so regardless of the law, it is in their best interest to prevent such disruptions. I'm not sure I understand the bird analogy. Is the point that Universiti…

Universities seek to have successful graduates

Once, yes, but I wonder if that is true anymore in these days of $60k+/year fees. Do universities make more from undergrads or alumni donations these days? Because if their goal really is successful graduates then they are not setting their students up for success by policing every dispute. It would be completely different obv if YikYak was the "official" app on campus, but the university administration is nothing to do with it, and wouldn't have the power to block it even if they were. What are you expecting them to do exactly?

If a crime has been committed, go to the police, the real police.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#72

Post by pjc50 »

_m8fo wrote: post #20
qmarchi wrote: post #16

Honestly, I don't get all the complaining from harassment. We live in a digital age where we can control a large amount of our information stream. If we don't like something, we just turn off the stream. It's like left-wing advocates and Fox. They don't like it, so they don't watch it. If you don't like what people are posting on some service, remove the service, inform people you know that you don't care about what'…

[flagged]

This is ridiculous. You can perhaps ignore people but only up to a point, and they don't like being ignored. Sometimes this turns into violence.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/27/trump-called-act-...

(I can just imagine if someone was walking round campus with noise cancelling headphones and got assaulted, I'm sure you'd be the first to blame them for not being aware of their surroundings)

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#73

Post by jancsika »

neolefty wrote: post #10

The article makes the case (to me) that local + anonymous was a failed experiment. In real-life communities, local means not anonymous, and bad behavior -- which is rare whether anonymous or not -- can be tied to an individual right away. The problem is that nasty, anonymous, and local is a terrible combination: > That hyper-localization is also what made the cases of harassment particularly galling. Ms. Musick, one…

Seems like this would have worked better if the anonymity were weakened. For example, a range between "click this button to deanonymize" and "do roughly 30 minutes of work on a modern desktop to break the key that reveals who posted this" which is chosen by the poster.

There's still value in posting such weak anonymous messages, but the foreknowledge that it will eventually get broken would ward off the worst of the abuses.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#74

Post by lr4444lr »

pitaa wrote: post #59

>two feminist groups and several former students filed a federal complaint accusing the University of Mary Washington...of failing to protect the female plaintiffs from cyber harassment... I am confused as to why anyone thinks its the University's duty to protect their students from "cyber harassment." I mean, I am aware of Title IX and all, I am just shocked at the amount of control, influence, and involvement into…

When you want the best possible outcome in a lawsuit, you go after the parties with deeper pockets, and the greater incentive to settle.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#75

Post by sanswork »

reilly3000 wrote: post #18
Alex3917 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wonder if it is possible to run an app like this at cost somehow. Given that it's just an API serving short text snippets, the hosting costs shouldn't be more than a few cents per user per year. Let's say you're serving one university with 50,000 students, and your hosting costs are $3,000 per year... Just send out an update email once a quarter with a few ads at the end and you've more than covered your expenses.

In order to do a quarterly email that pays your the service you would have to achieve a minimum page CPM of $15 which at the industry average rate of $1.50 would need 10 ads sold and trafficked per email. Not impossible, but a lot of effort to source and manage that revenue and/or more frequent emails, larger rates (more sales effort) or ...?

You could definitely get a much higher CPM based off the locality and demographic. I'm sure there are local food places/stores looking for more student business that would happily drop $1-2000 for an ad that would go out to most of the student population.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#76

Post by Svekax »

jjar wrote: post #40

This article seems to miss the point of why Yik Yak really failed. It didn't fail because of bullying, or bad publicity - That doesn't discourage users from using the app unless they're the ones targeted. The app failed because of the ham fisted attempts to control the userbase and remove a problem that did not affect the vast, vast majority of the userbase by introducing the "Handles" feature, and then later making…

I agree. Their app became popular as a place for uncensored, anonymous speech. When they started censoring and requiring usernames their customers spitefully deleted the app.

There are so few places left in the US where someone can engage in free speech. Free speech is nearly nonexistent on college campuses. Yik Yak was offering a product users couldn't find anywhere else. But they threw it all away.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#77

Post by sbov »

qmarchi wrote: post #16

Honestly, I don't get all the complaining from harassment. We live in a digital age where we can control a large amount of our information stream. If we don't like something, we just turn off the stream. It's like left-wing advocates and Fox. They don't like it, so they don't watch it. If you don't like what people are posting on some service, remove the service, inform people you know that you don't care about what'…

You're missing a huge component. I used to play games where people would threaten me all the time. But they were Russians or Danes who lived halfway around the world that didn't even know my real name. Even if they were telling the truth it didn't matter at all.

It seems very different if they know your name. And where you live. And are physically around you all the time. It's not exactly easy to "turn off" that the person sitting in the same room as you has a decent chance of being the same person posting about how they are going to rape and/or murder you.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#78

Post by gotothedoctor »

gaius wrote: post #71
gotothedoctor wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really confused? Leaving the law & federal funding requirements aside, Universities seek to have successful graduates & thus it is in their best interest to provide an environment that equips their students to learn. Being harassed undermines these goals, so regardless of the law, it is in their best interest to prevent such disruptions. I'm not sure I understand the bird analogy. Is the point that Universiti…

Universities seek to have successful graduates Once, yes, but I wonder if that is true anymore in these days of $60k+/year fees. Do universities make more from undergrads or alumni donations these days? Because if their goal really is successful graduates then they are not setting their students up for success by policing every dispute. It would be completely different obv if YikYak was the "official" app on campus,…

Successful graduates become alumni who make donations.

To be clear, no one is suggesting that Universities should be "policing every dispute." I am stating that Universities can and do seek to create the most effective learning environment for their students--and that harassment undermines this goal. This is why Universities, as indicated in the article, blocked (aka geofenced) YikYak (& though it is not mentioned, other apps as well).

Not sure I understand how that's relevant, but most University rules are not laws--but, while breaking them may not be criminal or even illegal,it can still get you thrown out of school.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#79

Post by skewart »

lapsock wrote: post #67
pitaa wrote: post #59

>two feminist groups and several former students filed a federal complaint accusing the University of Mary Washington...of failing to protect the female plaintiffs from cyber harassment... I am confused as to why anyone thinks its the University's duty to protect their students from "cyber harassment." I mean, I am aware of Title IX and all, I am just shocked at the amount of control, influence, and involvement into…

Why shouldn't the university offer some form of protection? Even if it's the form of blocking the app? The police clearly don't give a shit. Someone has to do something. What are universities doing with all that money they get from tuition?

Blocking the app is a really extreme move that harms the vast majority of users who are using it in a harmless way.

Imagine if people started putting up fliers that said mean, harassing things on lamposts and building walls around campus. Would tearing down the buildings and lampposts be a good response? If the campus were just a big open field with no buildings or anywhere where someone could put up a mean, harassing flier then the students would be protected from being exposed to them.

No one should be harrased or be on the receiving end of mean behavior. At the same time, there usually is only so much a university or other organization can do to protect its members before those protections have negative consequences for lots and lots of innocent community members.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#80

Post by soneca »

lr4444lr wrote: post #74
pitaa wrote: post #59

>two feminist groups and several former students filed a federal complaint accusing the University of Mary Washington...of failing to protect the female plaintiffs from cyber harassment... I am confused as to why anyone thinks its the University's duty to protect their students from "cyber harassment." I mean, I am aware of Title IX and all, I am just shocked at the amount of control, influence, and involvement into…

When you want the best possible outcome in a lawsuit, you go after the parties with deeper pockets, and the greater incentive to settle.

I agree. No coincidence in Yik Yak shutting down and being absente from the lawsuit I guess. Was it about Snapchat, I would bet it would be included in the lawsuit.
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