Yik Yak, an app that allows its users to post anonymously, is gaining users at Fresno State, offering an unfiltered live feed of the student community on campus.
Launched in November of 2013, Yik Yak is a bulletin app that allows its users to anonymously post within a 10-mile radius, to see and reply.
“Because your name is kept private, you don’t have to be the captain of the football team to be heard. You don’t even have to leave your dorm room,” said Cam Mullen, Yik Yak lead community developer. “It levels the playing field.”
To start “yakking,” all people need to do is download the app. There is no username or password. The question ‘Where are you?’ pops onto the screen while the GPS coordinates are locked. Once your location is set, users can begin posting and interacting with their surrounding community.
“Yik Yak creates a sense of community and belonging, and students love it, because they get to connect with everyone on campus without any friend requests or having to follow anyone,” Mullensaid.
Tim Haydock, a Fresno State mass communication and journalism professor, said students embrace anonymous apps because of the exciting feeling that comes with voicing their thoughts without the fear of repercussion.
“It’s exhilarating that you can just say these things with nobody knowing who you are,” Haydock stated. “There’s probably a sense of power, but it’s a really bizarre sense of power, because there’s no actual power that comes back to you.”
For students whose daily face-to-face social interactions are heavily governed by what others think, this type of social media tool can fill a void where people feel disconnected.
“There’s always going to be a cathartic therapeutic place for telling one’s deepest darkest secrets, and we wouldn’t do that if our names are attached,” Haydock said.
Fresno State student Spencer Cullen, a senior graphic design major, said that one positive of the app is that when a good question is posted, there will be many unfiltered responses in return, which people might not necessarily usually give in another situation.
“On Yik Yak, you get to see how people respond to your personal thoughts, so you get feedback on things that you might not ever ask your mother,” Mullen said. “You get to learn things from your peers that you’ve never been able to before because you don’t want your name or identity directly attached.”
As an open forum, Cullen said, he is used to Reddit where the most popular questions end up being either funny or thought provoking.
“Whereas on Yak, I realized most of the stuff tends to be pretty shallow,” Cullen said. “So I tend to post really sarcastic or ‘trolly’ comments on it, because I feel like there is not a lot of deep thought to posting, so why should you expect a thoughtful answer back?”
Haydock is happy that Fresno State is using Yik Yak innocently, as opposed to posting threatening messages.
“In our advanced Internet stage of knowing that trolls exist and comment streams are really probably not helpful, there’s something really sweet about someone asking advice on Yik Yak, as if that’s a really great place for that,” Haydock said.
Mullen responded thoughtfully on the issues that have arisen due to the anonymous nature of the app.
“We realize that Yik Yak is a tool and tools can be used and misused. In the same way a hammer can help to build houses, it can also hurt people,” Mullen said. “Our responsibility is to make Yik Yak as accepting, constructive and diverse as possible, and for those reasons we are continuously improving our processing to do that.”
In efforts to minimize the misuse of the app, Yik Yak has blocked over 85 percent of middle school and high school student use, and to download, students must now be at least 17 years old. The company has also run filters looking for offensive terms and has a team of seven moderators looking to find negative posts in order to take off abusive content as quickly as possible.
Mullen encourages users to look out for peers by reporting and downvoting illicit content.
“There tools we give to the community to curate and police,” Mullen said. “Users can down-vote posts, and once it gets to minus five, it’s deleted.”
Like Facebook and Twitter, Haydock said, these tools amplify the good and the bad.
“It can be used for all sorts of things. Maybe people are legitimately needing friends or an outlet, or they need to talk to somebody,” Haydock said. “So if Yik Yak gets used for people to find a friend to lunch with or someone to help them out with sharing a book for the semester that’s good.”
Yik Yak gives a new medium to students on campus, and as Muller said has a potential to become an unfiltered location-based news source.
