This past week I was introduced to the world of Yik Yak. Yik
Yak is a social community much like Twitter except everything is anonymous. No
one can put a name or a face with a Yik Yak post. You can also anonymously up
vote or down vote other users' “yaks.” If a yak gets a certain number of down votes it disappears from Yik Yak
completely. Yik Yak uses your location
to bring you yaks posted within a 5 mile radius.
From the buzz I have heard on campus, Yik Yak is
quickly gaining popularity at Ohio Northern as well as other college campuses
across the country. Even though the app makes for an entertaining and intriguing new
form of social media, it raises some ethical questions and concerns.
Because you can post anonymously to Yik Yak, all the rules of
social media etiquette are thrown out the door. You don’t have to filter your
posts or worry about the repercussions of what you post. You can troll people, lead them to believe absolute lies and keep them guessing about your true
identity. You can also stir the pot even more by playing devil’s advocate on other
people’s posts and down voting yaks just to get them removed.
Already the issue has been raised that Yik Yak is being used
as a way to anonymously bully others and get away with it. Because there is no
way to track the author of a post, you could yak about how your roommate is a
controlling fat cow and he or she would never know the comment came from you.
However, seeing such uncensored comments online makes you wonder if that fat
cow comment isn’t directed at you.
Now I walk around wondering if someone is yakking about my
hair, my thighs or the way I laugh. The secrecy of Yik
Yak encourages those who would normally be very conscious of their social
media footprint to post lies, rumors and hurtful comments.
It will be very interesting to see what becomes of Yik Yak
in the next couple of months. Will it lose popularity or even be shut down
because of the rumor mill it promotes, or will Yik Yak become the new Twitter
with the anonymity feature being the driving force behind the app's success?
First off, I am very fond of the title of this blog. It is very creative and I enjoy that. Second, this is a wonderful blog. I could not agree more, the fate of Yik Yak will be very interesting. I am not a fan of the application because of how some people use it. I laugh at the funny yaks and I cringe at the mean ones. Even on a app that was just created, there are right and wrong ways to use it.
ReplyDeleteI am a new anonymous face to Yik Yak too! So many people were talking about it that I had to see what all of the fuss was about. I agree with your statement about what it is really being used for though because sometimes I feel the same way about some posts. Some of the comments on it are also very crude. I am thinking to myself I really do not want to read that. As you said though, maybe that is a reason why it is so popular because you can be as shocking as you want and no one will hold you accountable.
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