The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak

> its unhealthy and causes more harm the more it's permitted

Interestingly enough, that's something that's even more true about sites for anonymous smearing of people in your local community.

> The article makes the case (to me) that local + anonymous was a failed experiment.

Jodel, a German YikYak clone, is still alive and well – in fact, doing better than ever.

Might be due to different environments, different moderation approaches, but it works.

Just last night I saw a message scrawled on a bathroom wall that said, "for a good time, call Mirimir."

Don't know if that's good or bad from your perspective, but I chuckled at the old school hyperlocal anonymity of it.

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 definitely was something that people wanted.

I was working at a University in the heyday of YikYak and yes, there were bad posts. Since it was tech related, our administration asked my department to keep an eye on it, but for our school (4500 some students), the attitude was more moderate than it was abusive. Threatening or harassing Yaks were almost always down-voted off the app before we'd even have a chance to see it.

Obviously, other institutions didn't have the same luck that we did, but from my point of view, there was a very good moderation system in place from YikYak - sure, anyone could post something anonymously that was malicious and hateful - but it was incredibly easy to clear it from YikYak.

The student body also took a huge interest in making sure that YikYak stayed in the spirit of anonymous; lot of articles in the student paper about it, lot of rants on the random Facebook Confess pages, and YikYak itself was filled with comments about keeping "stupid shit" off of it. Did some kids still post stupid stuff? Sure, but the rest were more inclined to help with the upkeep.

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 it non-optional.

I'm not even sure if this was a response to harassment, at the time it almost seemed like a pivot for the company - To become the next Snapchat or Facebook, sell targeted ads, and become what every other social company does. This was not what users wanted. It was the only place where people could truly make their thoughts heard without fearing social backlash, which is an issue of incredible importance for University students. And being able to talk with people of a similar age from your University was the perfect gauge for all those things you might want to say but can't. And the handles feature completely removed that. It became extremely easy to tie a person to a handle (Simply watch them while they've got the app open!). There was clear and immediate backlash and people started uninstalling the app en-masse, even posting on the platform about why they were doing so. Yik Yak reversed the update but the damage had already been done - People didn't trust the company to make the right decision any more, and the majority of users never reinstalled.

Note that I'm not saying harassment was good and that the company should have just thrown their hands up in the air and done nothing - The change marking offensive language was welcome, and responding to geo-fence requests in problem areas was fine. But the article fails to mention that the community moderation is incredibly effective. Stupid and offensive yaks were removed quickly through the power of the community - It only took 5 people to say "I don't like this" and you could remove a post.

Perhaps where I was (A small university in the north east of England), we didn't feel any real harassment. People posted racist and homophobic things occasionally, but these posts were quickly removed. Changes to the apps main functionality and appeal came overnight and surprised many people. They now hated the app, aimed at removing a problem that simply didn't exist in the community.

RIP Yik Yak. I'll miss you.