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The article makes the case (to me) that local + anonymous was a failed experiment. In real-life communities, local means not anonymous, and bad behavior -- whic

The article makes the case (to me) that local + anonymous was a failed experiment. In real-life communities, local means not anonymous, and bad behavior -- which is rare whether anonymous or not -- can be tied to an individual right away. The problem is that nasty, anonymous, and local is a terrible combination: > That hyper-localization is also what made the cases of harassment particularly galling. Ms. Musick, one of the plaintiffs, said, “With Yik Yak, in the back of your mind, you know they’re not from around the world or other parts of the state, they’re right there in your classroom, in your dining hall. On a campus with 4,500 students, that’s a pretty small group of people. This isn’t some creepy guy in his mom’s basement in Indiana.” In contrast, nasty, anonymous, and non-local is much easier to dismiss. The plaintiffs tried to solve it other ways, but they couldn't. All the local authorities referred them back to Yik-Yak -- the university staff, local police -- and Yik-Yak usually did nothing and at best would hide posts. To be clear, most of Yik-Yak was non-harassing. Useful? I don't know. Apparently not useful enough.

kuschku 9y ago
> 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.
csydas 9y ago
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.
- paulcole 9y ago
  >It's function a digital bathroom wall was pretty well executed But is that an idea worth executing? $73 million dollars down the tubes on a "digital bathroom wall." I would say I'm amazed that anyone thought this was an idea worth investing in, but sadly, I'm really not amazed at all.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    Well sure, when you put it that way. ;)
  - stale2002 9y ago
    I know of no way that I can communicate with all of my friends anonymously. Anonymity, and being able to express yourself and talk about your secrets/difficult life issues without worrying about social consequencesz is absolutely something that is valuable to the world. There are lots of people in the world who feel completely unable to talk to anyone about their personal issues.
  - csydas 9y ago
    Apparently it was. Just because it didn't monetize well doesn't mean it wasn't doing what it meant to well. Investors were surely disappointed but the userbase got exactly what it wanted and the app served its purpose very well. The ROI for investors isn't a metric of actual performance. Truthfully basically any monetization method besides random ads or a shop would have killed YikYak just as other non-core features did, and those as well probably would have done it. All change the dynamic of the community in interactions for the worse.
Forge36 9y ago
I wouldn't say we know it's useful or not. It went to profiles with handles and profile pictures. It lost its appeal when it did that. That's was when my community jumped ship to Jodel.
afarrell 9y ago
Zephyr, the first IP-based IM system, briefly experimented with anonymity. It was similarly local--mostly being on the MIT campus (links to CMU zephyr being rare). I've not seen a historical record of the messages posted, but I've been told by multiple grey-haired alums that things turned toxic very quickly.
- xxSparkleSxx 9y ago
  When I was in college a decade ago there were multiple sites like this. Juicy Campus was one of them, but I can't remember others. You could find some really abhorrent things on there, but no one ever got into trouble. It's a shitty message board and some people get their feelings hurts. We're all adults though, people just moved on.
jancsika 9y ago
Seems like this would have worked better if the anonymity were weakened. For example, a range between "click this button to deanonymize" and "do roughly 30 minutes of work on a modern desktop to break the key that reveals who posted this" which is chosen by the poster. There's still value in posting such weak anonymous messages, but the foreknowledge that it will eventually get broken would ward off the worst of the abuses.
rxhernandez 9y ago
> “With Yik Yak, in the back of your mind, you know they’re not from around the world or other parts of the state, they’re right there in your classroom, in your dining hall. On a campus with 4,500 students, that’s a pretty small group of people. This isn’t some creepy guy in his mom’s basement in Indiana.” I mean is this really true? I was interacting with UCI students when I spent nights working in the Google complex. That's at least a couple mile radius.

kuschku 9y ago

> 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.

csydas 9y ago

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.

paulcole 9y ago
>It's function a digital bathroom wall was pretty well executed But is that an idea worth executing? $73 million dollars down the tubes on a "digital bathroom wall." I would say I'm amazed that anyone thought this was an idea worth investing in, but sadly, I'm really not amazed at all.
- rhizome 9y ago
  Well sure, when you put it that way. ;)
- stale2002 9y ago
  I know of no way that I can communicate with all of my friends anonymously. Anonymity, and being able to express yourself and talk about your secrets/difficult life issues without worrying about social consequencesz is absolutely something that is valuable to the world. There are lots of people in the world who feel completely unable to talk to anyone about their personal issues.
- csydas 9y ago
  Apparently it was. Just because it didn't monetize well doesn't mean it wasn't doing what it meant to well. Investors were surely disappointed but the userbase got exactly what it wanted and the app served its purpose very well. The ROI for investors isn't a metric of actual performance. Truthfully basically any monetization method besides random ads or a shop would have killed YikYak just as other non-core features did, and those as well probably would have done it. All change the dynamic of the community in interactions for the worse.

Forge36 9y ago

I wouldn't say we know it's useful or not. It went to profiles with handles and profile pictures. It lost its appeal when it did that. That's was when my community jumped ship to Jodel.

afarrell 9y ago

Zephyr, the first IP-based IM system, briefly experimented with anonymity. It was similarly local--mostly being on the MIT campus (links to CMU zephyr being rare). I've not seen a historical record of the messages posted, but I've been told by multiple grey-haired alums that things turned toxic very quickly.

xxSparkleSxx 9y ago
When I was in college a decade ago there were multiple sites like this. Juicy Campus was one of them, but I can't remember others. You could find some really abhorrent things on there, but no one ever got into trouble. It's a shitty message board and some people get their feelings hurts. We're all adults though, people just moved on.

jancsika 9y ago

Seems like this would have worked better if the anonymity were weakened. For example, a range between "click this button to deanonymize" and "do roughly 30 minutes of work on a modern desktop to break the key that reveals who posted this" which is chosen by the poster. There's still value in posting such weak anonymous messages, but the foreknowledge that it will eventually get broken would ward off the worst of the abuses.

rxhernandez 9y ago

> “With Yik Yak, in the back of your mind, you know they’re not from around the world or other parts of the state, they’re right there in your classroom, in your dining hall. On a campus with 4,500 students, that’s a pretty small group of people. This isn’t some creepy guy in his mom’s basement in Indiana.” I mean is this really true? I was interacting with UCI students when I spent nights working in the Google complex. That's at least a couple mile radius.