AnnaBeth Crittenden, Campus Carrier Assistant Entertainment Editor
An anonymous Twitter-like feed with posts only from people who are currently in a 10-mile radius, Yik Yak has become a breeding ground for complaints, jokes and observations on college campuses.
The app was created in Atlanta by two former fraternity boys, Brooks Buffington and Tyler Droll, as a way for posts to be liked based solely on their humor without knowing the person behind the comment.
However, although the app was created with beneficial purposes, many campuses and high schools are finding that the app has created more problems than they originally suspected.
 |
| Graphic by Chelsea Hoag, Managing Editor |
Most recently, Eastern Michigan University honors freshmen issued a cyber attack against three female professors during a mandatory class.
Every Friday, 230 freshmen at Eastern Michigan University are required to take an interdisciplinary study class.
However, on this particular Friday, the students began using Yik Yak to post hundreds of demeaning and abusive comments about their professors.
After class, one of the upperclassmen who helped teach the course found the posts and showed them to professors. These posts insulted the professors’ gender, teaching styles and appearances by using degrading and profane words.
Although Eastern Michigan University is not the only campus dealing with the large amount of verbal abuse on the app, this incident shows that professors are slowly losing control over their classes with the students’ ability to post their thoughts for the entire campus to view and encourage.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education from Jan. 29, the administrators at Eastern Michigan refused to track down the students responsible since the app is anonymous.
This urged the professors to call on their union to solve the problem of harassment from Yik Yak. Margaret A. Crouch, a philosophy professor, even stated that she would quit if she had to put up with the Yik Yak abuse again.
However, cyber bullying on Yik Yak happens to more than just the professors. Since the posts are anonymous, students have begun saying whatever they want and even naming students in order to harass them.
However, the amount of cyber bullying that appears on the app is usually dependent on the students at the campus and ranges from almost none to frequent.
Other than harassment from the app, many campuses and high schools have had to shut down their schools for days because bomb threats have appeared in the Yik Yak news feed.
According to the Star Gazette from Elmira, NY from Jan 21, a 19-year-old college student, Matthew T. Lee, at Corning Community College in New York was arrested on Dec. 3 after posting about a bomb threat on Yik Yak.
His threat led to the evacuation of the dormitory on campus while bomb-sniffing dogs and police officers entered campus to deter the threat. Lee turned himself in some time later and could face seven years in prison due to falsely reporting an incident.
According to Atlanta Magazine from Jan. 29, many high schools have been having a similar problem, finding threats such as: “The itsy bitsy students came up the water spout, down came my bullets and washed them all out.”
Some of these problems have arisen from the fact that the app has expanded to high schools, when it was only intended for college campuses. Yet the high school demographic has latched on to the app quickly.
This meant that Buffington and Droll had to modify their technology so that the younger demographic could not access their product. According to Atlanta Magazine, this was accomplished through “geofences” which turned high school buildings into a dead zone for the app.
The creators, however, are attempting to widen their reach to more college campuses. According to Atlanta Magazine, despite the various problems, the creators have made over $62 million and have grown from a thousand to two million users.
They work in an office in which they closely monitor the “yaks” posted in different areas in order to see how far the app’s reach has gone. Although the app is based mainly in America for the moment, the creators hope that Yik Yak will soon spread to the rest of the world.
Yet, the threats and cyber bullying cannot be ignored and hurts both the creator’s morals and business. They have received phone calls from administrators saying that the app was being banned at their school and decided that they need to find a way to monitor their content more closely.
According to Atlanta Magazine, Yik Yak has begun working with a company in the Philippines in order to screen their app for offensive posts. Buffington and Droll created a “software flowchart” so their workers can find the worrisome posts.
Yik Yak also has a feature where if a post is unliked (or “downvoted”) five times, it disappears from the feed. The creators are attempting to balance allowing the users freedom on their app while monitoring it for dangerous content.
Although nothing as dangerous as bomb threats has appeared on the Yik Yak app here at Berry, the app still receives much traffic from students.
Brian Carroll, associate professor of communication, said he believes that the integrity of the students on the app is revealed through their comments.
“It’s a neutral technology,” Carroll said. “It can be used smartly, it can be used in less smart ways. So we’re going to find out about the users, not the technology. If on a college campus it’s used to smear people and to make life difficult for people, then we’ve learned about those users.”
However, Yik Yak also has some positive elements. The app has the ability to spread news around the campus quicker than the media. According to Atlanta Magazine, the information about a virus at Emory University appeared on the app five days before the Emory News Center reported the same information.
The app also has a feature in which users can “peek” at the feeds from other campuses as well as other areas.
This allows users to see yaks from areas in which important events are happening and hear information from anonymous sources that are active and uncorrupted by the media.
The app also has helped people with depression and other mental disorders. People with these disorders feel safer reaching out for help in an anonymous setting where other users can reach out and help the person.
Yet, this app, along with other apps that allow anonymous posting, brings out the integrity of the students involved. In an environment where anything can be said with practically no consequences, the true nature of the students involved is brought to light.
“The cloak of anonymity allows us to do things we normally wouldn’t do if you knew who they were. It excuses people of accountability,” Carroll said. “Stand up for what you’re saying. Show us who you are. That’s mature.”