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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

#131

Post by DanBC »

stale2002 wrote: post #129
DanBC wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So how about those procensorship people just leave it be and let those of us who disagree with them go to our own platform? hypothetical: I've just told all your neighbors that you've got a criminal conviction for raping 8 year old children. It's just words, what's the harm?

Anonymously on the internet? Sure, whatever. If we live in a culture where people understand the concept of "people on the internet could be lying", especially with regards to specific, highly serious, allegations against specific people, then someone posting something like that about me wouldn't be a big deal, because nobody would believe them. There certainly could be "harm", but I'd argue that on average, the harm…

> If we live in a culture where people understand the concept of "people on the internet could be lying", especially with regards to specific, highly serious, allegations against specific people, then someone posting something like that about me wouldn't be a big deal, because nobody would believe them.

We don't live in that culture. We live in a culture where paediatricians are attacked because a group of people was too fucking stupid to know the difference between paediatrician and paedophile.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.s...

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#132

Post by GhostVII »

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?

> Why shouldn't the university offer some form of protection? Even if it's the form of blocking the app?

Why should the University be in charge of controlling what apps you use? If you don't like the app, don't use it, it's not difficult. Some people liked using it, and it had genuine uses, so blocking it is pretty extreme and pointless. And set's bad precident.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#133

Post by [deleted] »

ams6110 wrote: post #63
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…

Sadly it's what the parents today (who pay the tuition) are demanding. Hence "unique snowflakes" and "helicopter parents." Add to that a healthy dose of media sensationalism to a degree that never used to happen. Everything is drama, crisis, outrage, injustice.

[deleted]

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#134

Post by dvt »

stale2002 wrote: post #123
dvt wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> free speech and avoiding censorship are not just legal rights, they are principles that ought to be defended. those who would argue for a world where the de facto standard is censorship because they are capable of a narrow legalistic interpretation of freedoms are hideously short-sighted. if you endorse the erosion of these principles in the venues where you are strong, your enemies will use your exact arguments to…

Popular speech doesn't need to be protected. It is never in any danger of being censored, almost by definition. The only purpose of freedom of speech and thought is to protect unpopular, evil, and straight up false speech. That's fine if you use your platform to exclude those that you don't like. But we aren't talking about that. We are talking about platforms that explicitly ALLOW this shitposting, and yet other peo…

> The only purpose of freedom of speech and thought is to protect unpopular, evil, and straight up false speech.

This is patently false. Did you even read the paragraph I quoted? I'm not sure if I even need to get into details here. There are hundreds of historical examples where non-hateful, and non-evil speech was censored. But you're being incredibly disingenuous by lumping in "unpopular" with "evil" -- the two are not even remotely the same.

You're trying to put an equal sign between, e.g., Communism (unpopular) and an anonymous post doxxing a rape victim on social media (evil). Give me a break.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#135

Post by killin_dan »

oliv__ wrote: post #110
killin_dan wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rouge avians -> rogue avians Rouge avians would just be red birds. Not sure which is funnier in this example. My school had geese, which were definitely rogue-ass birds.

Seriously. Geese are evil.

After being chased one too many times, they inspired me to learn to hunt waterfowl. I get back at them every year now >:)

They're actually delicious though. I like duck, but I can't eat very much because it's so rich, but goose is a less flavorful, but still gamey type of meat. If you haven't ever tried it, I recommend it. Be VERY careful when you are eating it though, biting into a shotgun pellet can crack a tooth.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#136

Post by closeparen »

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…

If you're imagining a student driving to class, you're imagining a very different kind of environment.

In the schools where these kinds of demands are made, the university provides your housing, food, utilities, medical care, the centers of your social life (both in terms of facilities and student organizations), local police department, credit union, etc. Even if you live off campus, the entire neighborhood is an (unofficial) extension of the university community. Even if you're at a private business, the university probably owns the building and leases to that business. Private apartment building, your neighbors are all students and faculty.

This typically happens in a small, walkable enclave where it would be very strange for a student to have a car or commute in from outside the enclave. The university owns every part of a student's life in this case, and it's reasonable to think it has some responsibility to keep its community healthy, within reasonable limits.

Your criticism seems more applicable to a commuter/community college, not a residential one.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#137

Post by csydas »

paulcole wrote: post #86
csydas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is entirely fair. YikYak's undoing was doing away with the features that brought people to it; it was a very popular application, and continued to be right up until the de-anonymizing aspects were brought into play. It's function a digital bathroom wall was pretty well executed and in most cases, seemingly a success for interaction. It wasn't really good for anything else besides shitposting, but it…

>It's function a digital bathroom wall was pretty well executed But is that an idea worth executing? $73 million dollars down the tubes on a "digital bathroom wall." I would say I'm amazed that anyone thought this was an idea worth investing in, but sadly, I'm really not amazed at all.

Apparently it was. Just because it didn't monetize well doesn't mean it wasn't doing what it meant to well. Investors were surely disappointed but the userbase got exactly what it wanted and the app served its purpose very well.

The ROI for investors isn't a metric of actual performance. Truthfully basically any monetization method besides random ads or a shop would have killed YikYak just as other non-core features did, and those as well probably would have done it. All change the dynamic of the community in interactions for the worse.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#138

Post by gaius »

gotothedoctor wrote: post #107
pitaa wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I could take this to mean that you're arguing for safe spaces. While creating an "effective learning environment" sounds noble, some students seem to be interpreting this to mean they shouldn't have to hear viewpoints they disagree with [1]. Coddled students don't make successful graduates, as evidenced by the interns that were fired last year after writing a petition about the office dress code that th…

No, I'm not arguing for "safe spaces" here at all. Nor am I suggesting students shouldn't "have to hear viewpoints they disagree with." I am arguing that, along with legal duties, Universities have an interest and an incentive to prevent their students from being harassed. To be clear, being harassed is not being disagreed with. I don't see the relevance of this anecdata & punditry to the issue, nor do I know what "c…

If people are being harassed and threatened over an app, that is no different to them being harassed by POTS - the police can deal with that.

But if people are going to their university and saying hi, I installed this app that you didn't write or tell me to install, and I don't like it, sort it out for me, then that's an unreasonable ask, IMHO. It's like getting angry with a bakery because they won't repair your bicycle.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#139

Post by gozur88 »

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?

>The police clearly don't give a shit.

The police aren't surrogate parents. They're there to deal with crimes.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

#140

Post by Atheros »

brudgers wrote: post #43
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'…

Ralph Koster's experience with online communities has informed his views. They are sophisticated because the problem is messy: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024060/Still-Logged-In-What-AR I look at online communities differently. The problem from Koster's perspective is that when the target of harrassment/abuse/etc. turns off the source feed the feed still goes into the target's community. The communications analogy…

You started out talking about harassment and abuse but then gave an example of only libel.
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