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Yik Yak Raises Controversy On College Campuses
HughPickens.com writes Jonathan Mahler writes in the NYT that just as Facebook swept through the dorm rooms of America's college students a decade ago, the social app Yik Yak, which shows anonymous messages from users within a 1.5-mile radius is now taking college campuses by storm. "Think of it as a virtual community bulletin board — or maybe a virtual bathroom wall at the student union," writes Mahler. "It has become the go-to social feed for college students across the country to commiserate about finals, to find a party or to crack a joke about a rival school." While much of the chatter is harmless, some of it is not. "Yik Yak is the Wild West of anonymous social apps," says Danielle Keats Citron. "It is being increasingly used by young people in a really intimidating and destructive way." Since the app's introduction a little more than a year ago, Yik Yak has been used to issue threats of mass violence on more than a dozen college campuses, including the University of North Carolina, Michigan State University and Penn State. Racist, homophobic and misogynist "yaks" have generated controversy at many more, among them Clemson, Emory, Colgate and the University of Texas. At Kenyon College, a "yakker" proposed a gang rape at the school's women's center.
Colleges are largely powerless to deal with the havoc Yik Yak is wreaking. The app's privacy policy prevents schools from identifying users without a subpoena, court order or search warrant, or an emergency request from a law-enforcement official with a compelling claim of imminent harm. Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that "banning Yik Yak on campuses might be unconstitutional," especially at public universities or private colleges in California where the so-called Leonard Law protects free speech. She said it would be like banning all bulletin boards in a school just because someone posted a racist comment on one of the boards. In one sense, the problem with Yik Yak is a familiar one. Anyone who has browsed the comments of an Internet post is familiar with the sorts of intolerant, impulsive rhetoric that the cover of anonymity tends to invite. But Yik Yak's particular design can produce especially harmful consequences, its critics say. "It's a problem with the Internet culture in general, but when you add this hyper-local dimension to it, it takes on a more disturbing dimension," says Elias Aboujaoude." "You don't know where the aggression is coming from, but you know it's very close to you."
Colleges are largely powerless to deal with the havoc Yik Yak is wreaking. The app's privacy policy prevents schools from identifying users without a subpoena, court order or search warrant, or an emergency request from a law-enforcement official with a compelling claim of imminent harm. Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that "banning Yik Yak on campuses might be unconstitutional," especially at public universities or private colleges in California where the so-called Leonard Law protects free speech. She said it would be like banning all bulletin boards in a school just because someone posted a racist comment on one of the boards. In one sense, the problem with Yik Yak is a familiar one. Anyone who has browsed the comments of an Internet post is familiar with the sorts of intolerant, impulsive rhetoric that the cover of anonymity tends to invite. But Yik Yak's particular design can produce especially harmful consequences, its critics say. "It's a problem with the Internet culture in general, but when you add this hyper-local dimension to it, it takes on a more disturbing dimension," says Elias Aboujaoude." "You don't know where the aggression is coming from, but you know it's very close to you."
The effect is to create something like this - an anonymous way for people to let out the aggressions and hatreds that they already had, and are just afraid to announce due to the attempted control of speech in any public, identifiable arena.
Maybe leaving things alone was better? Sacrificing free speech for a better society was the argument. So now what? We're stuck with the bad with none of the good.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I know I'm already old in the eyes of hip young college students, but am I the only one who's never heard of Yik Yak? It sounds like what happens after you eat cheap chinese food on campus.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not in general mind you, but most people who have their name/reputation tied to what they say to others are rarely* inflammatory, belligerent, or insulting because it has social consequences for the speaker. But anonymous speech, where it has no consequences for you and only consequences for a target, is specifically the case where people become assholes.
Now, they may have been assholes all their lives, but anonymous services empower them. Are you really in favor of empowering assholes?
*since many on /. seem so to be pissed all the time, I mean "rarely" in the sense of the number of mean spirited comments compared to all comments made in the world, not the number of mean spirited comments *you* come up with among your friends or when you're pissed at someone/something.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I just downloaded the app. It lets you listen in on various different college campuses in case your area is boring (it is). I did a brief, extremely unscientific survey of a few colleges, and I didn't see anything specifically racist, homophobic or whatever. What I saw was college kids being college kids.
Sure you're going to see a little bit of everything because there's a little bit of everything in society. I didn't see anything too bad, but I'm sure it's there. Political correctness and people trying to censor stuff like this are the problem. This is no different than a local (physical) bulletin board.
Now, where is the daylight savings time article?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
No, they're not. A prostitute will go away.
I downloaded Yik Yak and used it for about a week. I saw what was going on there.
If you are disturbed by what you see on there, delete the app. Let those idiots spew toxic shit at each other, and you can go on unaware of their ramblings.
Eventually, Yik Yak will die off, and the "problem" is solved.
Or, do you somehow think we can pass some law that will change human nature?
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
"Colleges are largely powerless to deal with the havoc Yik Yak is wreaking." This assumes that Yik Yak is wreaking havoc. So far, the article itself does not even give any real example to 'havoc' being wreaked by Yik Yak. This whole article can be summed up by "A new disruptive way of anonymous communication is catching on amongst college students. Naturally, a bunch of Orwellian-type people are worried about their lack of control over it." Further, if any actual violence happens because it was first announced on Yik Yak, it would be no different than if actual violence happened because it was announced via email, Facebook, or someone yelling and screaming it at a crowd.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
And am *I* the one who gets to decide what is and isn't? Or you?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Colleges are largely powerless to deal with the havoc Yik Yak is wreaking.
Huh? A piece of software is wreaking havoc? Wouldn't it be the sociopathic children that attend the school that are creating the havoc?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I recently downloaded the app and gave it a spin that lasted about two weeks. It's a new spin on a very old concept but it doesn't work well at all.
That 1.5 mile radius is incredibly limiting - if you start a conversation at home you can't participate in it once you get to work. The anonymous comments are filled with so much bitching and whining of spoiled brats it really makes me resent the student body at my local university. There's a huge amount of group-think that's baked into the app itself - say something unpopular and earn just a few downvotes and Yik Yak will delete your comment forever. That's when it's not losing your comments to begin with: that crappy service lost nearly 20% of my comments, but continued to alert me for updates to conversations that have completely disappeared.
TL;DR - Yik Yak is a gimmick and a poorly made one at that.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
That's what you pay them for
The trouble with Yik Yak is that you're hostage to other people's whims, and this app seems to attract people that prefer negativity. I tried a little experiment -- I posted one "funny" comment, one positive comment, and one negative comment. Both the funny and positive comments were quickly down-voted to -5 and removed, whereas the negative comment was up-voted and quickly became the most popular yak in my area. Most of the other top-rated yaks are people moaning about the town, the people, the night life, etc. Usually by the time you see a nice / positive yak it's already at -3 or -4 and when you refresh the list it's gone. I deleted the app.
They just prove that human being in general when they can hide who they are, turn into horrible monsters.
History repeats, yet nobody learns.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yes. It is. It amazes me that people still cite Holmes's "fire in a crowded theater" bullshit from Schenck v. United States, where the SCOTUS trampled over Amendment I to criminalize an anti-draft protest.
If you shout "fire" in a theater when there is in fact a fire, you could be a hero. If you're on stage as part of the performance and fire is part of the plot of the play, you can shout "fire!". If shouting "fire" in a theater causes people to get trampled, the fault is on the architects or operators of the theater for not providing adequate exit routes, not the speaker. The only rightful liability someone falsely crying "fire" falsely has is civil, not criminal.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Here's the harsh reality:
On the campus I work for, there have been death threats posted on YikYak. Are they credible? There's no way to know. Because we don't know who's sending them. So they have to be treated as credible—and the university simply doesn't have the resources to provide even one person with 24/7 protection, let alone the half-dozen or so that the death threats were issued against.
So the administration's response was basically, "We cannot protect you if someone is determined to get at you. If you believe the threats are credible, then our best recommendation is for you to leave the campus." And some of them did. I believe they came back after winter break, but still, they missed final exams, and I have no idea how much hassle that's going to cause them in the long run.
Which all means that if you are a person who has a grudge against someone else on campus, and few scruples, you can get them more or less kicked off of campus by issuing an anonymous death threat against them on YikYak.
Is that the kind of "harsh reality" you think is appropriate? Where people who are just trying to get a decent education (and paying a pretty penny for it) can be forced to make the choice between abandoning it, and risking their lives by staying on campus, just because some asshole with an anonymous YikYak account wants them to?
I get the importance of anonymity in free speech, believe me. But free speech is a means to an end, not an end in itself. That end, broadly, is a free society. And society works because bad actors can be called to account for their bad actions. If people can do bad things without threat of consequence, the whole thing starts to fall apart.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
i think that youngins that make such comments should be given instructions on why this is not what a young man should be doing before somebody decides to get "his Brother" and finish said prayer.
It all boils down to what Judge does a person want to have??
If someone's making credible threats of mass violence anonymously, how about GETTING A SUBPOENA TO FIND OUT WHO'S DOING IT? It'll take a few hours at most, and you won't have to obliterate the rule of law or work to actively compromise the computer systems of privately-held US companies.
As the UVA Rape Hoax showed, they don't want the police to handle campus cases because that pesky "due process of law" prevents them from punishing males before they've been convicted.
They prefer Star Chambers where the lives of men can be ruined without offering them a chance to fight back. Much better for instituting conformkity and social control to the identitarian agenda.
The first vote I propose is a law saying that any disparagement of Jesus is illegal speech.
77% of Americans are Christian. So let's put it to a vote and see democracy in action.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I think the real debate is not so much about freedom of speech - I would hope that everyone basically agrees with that to a large extent - but rather about anonymous speech. There are times at which this is essential: spilling the beans on a large corporation or a powerful government. However it is inevitably abused by idiots wanting to deliberately upset people for no good reason. Generally I tend to find anonymous speech far, far less interesting and insightful than non-anonymous...except for the odd exceptions which can be extremely important to learn about. What we really need is difficult, anonymous speech so that people are only willing to go to the lengths required for important messages and not just to troll the rest of us.
Like William Gibson says, "The strreet finds its own uses for things".
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
As usual, academia's response when confronted by the ultimate result of their own mores: reflexively play jackbooted fascists. "How can we stop this? How can we control this?"
Free speech is free for everyone, including assholes. That is ALSO including racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. You don't get to define what speech is free.
Look, I personally DON'T believe in unfettered free speech. However, I'm sincerely amused by watching the Academic Left that has stridently insisted for 50 years that pretty much *everything* must be allowed, deeply discomforted when confronted by (human) nature, red in tooth and claw.
-Styopa