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My problem with Yik Yak isn't that its anonymous, its that I cannot conceive of a way that it could be used to do anything but hurt people. I read an interview

My problem with Yik Yak isn't that its anonymous, its that I cannot conceive of a way that it could be used to do anything but hurt people. I read an interview with one of the founders who described a story of how Yik Yak was used for good. A user needed a place to stay and another user offered a spot on his dorm room floor. The problem with this example is that it breaks the design of Yik Yak: in order for this "good" example to occur the users had to give up their anonymity, effectively ruining the point of the app. Last month I visited a new city and was curious to see what their Yik Yak was like. It was essentially a stream of abusive posts like those featured in the article. While refreshing the app I saw a glimmer of hope. Someone wrote "X is a really nice guy." The post was down voted to invisibility in literally less than two minutes. I have my beliefs about the importance of freedom of speech and safe, anonymous places for whistleblowers etc. But this is something else. It makes my stomach churn. I'm readily admit that I am biased on this issue, I've seen first hand how much pain this app causes people. I'm told that at my old high school there is at least one student on suicide watch who would not be without Yik Yak. Putting aside arguments about freedom, if taking down an app could save a kid's life then shouldn't we do it? If Formspring didn't exist then it is very possible that the four minors who committed suicide in connection to the site[1] might still be alive today. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formspring#Controversies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formspring#Controversies EDIT: Keep in mind there is a difference between free speech and hate speech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech). Ditto for libel (ex the article's quoted posts accusing the school principal of molesting children).

freehunter 12y ago
There's a great use for an app like this, and it's something I've wanted forever. Unfortunately, the only people who download and install it seem to be assholes. That reason is alerting people around you to things going on. If I see a firetruck going past my office, I'm going to want to know where it's headed, for a number of reasons (is there anyone I know involved, are people safe, am I going to be delayed getting home, am I in any danger). Local news isn't going to pick up every fire department response. Or in more positive ideas, a spontaneous block party is happening down at the local ice cream shop. I'd love to walk down there, but I don't know it's happening. Hyper local services would be incredibly useful with leveraging technology to bring a community closer together. Twitter could solve this problem, but I need to know who to follow. With hyper-local services like Yik Yak, I wouldn't need to follow anyone. The information would just be there. >if taking down an app could save a kid's life then shouldn't we do it? It's not technology's problem, it's society's. We could save millions of lives by getting rid of cars. Thousands by getting rid of cell phones. There's a reason we don't do that. There's a much easier answer to the problem of how to protect children from being bullied on Yik Yak: teach your kids the value of walking away.
- sciguy77 12y ago
  > That reason is alerting people around you to things going on. If I see a firetruck going past my office, I'm going to want to know where it's headed, for a number of reasons (is there anyone I know involved, are people safe, am I going to be delayed getting home, am I in any danger). Local news isn't going to pick up every fire department response. Or in more positive ideas, a spontaneous block party is happening down at the local ice cream shop. I'd love to walk down there, but I don't know it's happening. Hyper local services would be incredibly useful with leveraging technology to bring a community closer together. Twitter could solve this problem, but I need to know who to follow. With hyper-local services like Yik Yak, I wouldn't need to follow anyone. The information would just be there. Ok, so you want a local information app (Circle?). Why does anonymity have to be central to such an app? > We could save millions of lives by getting rid of cars. Cars exist for a clear purpose with clear benefit. Here, the costs are deemed acceptable considering the benefits of rapid travel. What are the benefits of Yik Yak? As I noted in my original post, even the creators of Yik Yak couldn't come up with a "good" example of Yik Yak that followed its anonymous design. > teach your kids the value of walking away Yes, it would be lovely if all parents everywhere instilled morality into their kids. That isn't the case. Some kids have crappy parents, or no parents at all. When a student posts something that causes a death there are two victims: the suicide, and the kid who has to live with the fact that their actions resulted in death. Most of the bullies in the Formspring suicides were kids themselves, too immature to understand the impact of what they were doing.
  - the_unknown 12y ago
    As well, I'd like to add a third victim by this lack of morality (well, I'd prefer the term civility but I'm good with either in a pinch!). Society as a whole. Although we'd like all kids to be rational, understanding, and mature they simply aren't. I don't think many adults are either. We're ruled by our emotions and if people insult us (or our hair, clothes, etc..) we feel awful on some level even if we know not to care about the insult. Kids even more so. If we could all be reasonable, rational, respectful we'd be good. But the jerks of the world have ruined it for us and walking away and burying our heads in the sand isn't always possible or the right thing to do.
dublinben 12y ago
If you're not willing to defend speech you disagree with, or find repulsive, then you don't support free speech. Popular and uncontroversial speech doesn't need any protection, because nobody is trying to ban it.
- sciguy77 12y ago
  Hate speech is a different matter, that's why it's not legally protected. I believe in the first amendment, both the freedom it grants and the limitations it imposes. Harassing a kid because he's gay or African American isn't protected, and I'm OK with that.
  - gojomo 12y ago
    "Hate speech" is legally protected in the United States, unless it incites imminent violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#Supreme_Court_case_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#Supreme_Court_case... With regard to the first amendment in the Bill of Rights, the only "limitations it imposes" are on Congress, not anyone's speech.
- lostlogin 12y ago
  Not sure where you live, but a lot of what is quoted in the article would be libel - is libel allowed as 'free speech' anywhere? The anonimity of users allows breaking of rules is a bit beyond anything I'd support.
  - Taek 12y ago
    I'm not trying to make a blanket case for the acceptability of hate speech or libel, but I think there are situations where allowing them is useful. If you are, deep down, a hateful racist, it's better that everyone else is at least aware. If for the most part you are a nice and reasonable person, there's a chance you'll be corrected and come to accept the incorrectness of your beliefs. On the other side of things, what if everybody does share the opinion that X comes too close to the sexual harassment line on a frequent basis. It's easy to imagine that libel would appear on Yik Yak about X. But now X has a big red flag and is more careful to respect people's boundaries, fearing legal action. This doesn't cover all cases, and doesn't pardon all libel. But especially with anonymous comments (it's not a reputable source like The Guardian), a tool like Yik Yak can help to relieve social tension, or at least bring up topics that everyone is otherwise too afraid to approach.
encoderer 12y ago
Possible, sure. Anything is possible. But you're acting like Formspring bullying was the one discrete event that pushed these kids to suicide. These people were clearly subject to offline bullying as well (by the same people), it just so happens that the formspring variety leaves a paper trail.
- sciguy77 12y ago
  I'm not an expert on cyberbullying, but there were a few cases that happened when I was in high school. At least at the school I attended, the victims had never been accosted by the bullies in person. But then again, I have a single-digit sample size.
yesiamyourdad 12y ago
As a form of protest or whistleblowing, anonymity is absolutely useful. Wikileaks needed anonymity to really work, and Twitter users in Turkey reporting on unrest there see the need for anonymity. The problem is that while you could conceive of a noble purpose, very few people are going to use it for that purpose, least of all US high school kids.
- sciguy77 12y ago
  What is the conceived noble purpose of Yik Yak?
  - bloaf 12y ago
    Letting kids be terrible to each other so that they can see first hand how it unpleasant it is. Through that experience they will become more compassionate adults.
Taek 12y ago
Yik Yak serves a good purpose. It brings up those things that can't be said without anonymity. It allows you to push people's buttons in a way that you can't when your name is attached. Maybe you are the person that nobody likes but nobody wants to tell you. Yik Yak can help you out. Maybe all of your peers think you are a slut, but nobody says it to your face. Yik Yak brings it out into the open. Yik Yak is dangerous and disruptive because we don't know how to deal with such forward criticism. Even more, nothing on Yik Yak is necessarily true (though you wouldn't say it if you didn't think it seemed at least partially correct). Yik Yak enables forward, hard hitting, juicy criticism (gossip, lies, and simply outrageous nonsense, etc). And while the immediate result is pain, criticism is important on an individual level just as it's important that we can criticize our government. The damage that Yik Yak causes is the result of us not being able to handle criticism. At the highest level, I welcome the flow of knowledge and hope that it leads us to a better place overall. But that doesn't mean I'm ignoring the immediate problems. People have likely committed suicide as a result of all the openness. But that's not a problem with the technology, that's a problem with how we approach ruthless criticism. We might be stuck with the technology, but we aren't stuck with the devastation. It's a different type of bullying and criticism that we need to learn how to deal with, and that we need to prepare our children for.
- rtpg 12y ago
  You seem to forget the fact that on the internet anonymity makes us even bigger liars and assholes. Also that these are kids going through puberty and the like, not a tribe of super mellow and "rational" people. Even beyond that, extremely personal attacks are rarely "constructive criticism". "This guy is super ugly" isn't going to be super helpful on a personal improvement level. Negative feedback on a personal level also rarely works. This talk was about performance reviews, but it covers the criticisms of people's personality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=1402 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=1402
diminoten 12y ago
I wonder what effect it would have to change "up"/"down" voting into "nice"/"mean". I have a hypothesis that people would tag honestly, but "up" and "down" aren't directly enough associated with moral judgement. Turn the hate against itself by getting people to hate on the text itself instead of hate via the text.

freehunter 12y ago

There's a great use for an app like this, and it's something I've wanted forever. Unfortunately, the only people who download and install it seem to be assholes. That reason is alerting people around you to things going on. If I see a firetruck going past my office, I'm going to want to know where it's headed, for a number of reasons (is there anyone I know involved, are people safe, am I going to be delayed getting home, am I in any danger). Local news isn't going to pick up every fire department response. Or in more positive ideas, a spontaneous block party is happening down at the local ice cream shop. I'd love to walk down there, but I don't know it's happening. Hyper local services would be incredibly useful with leveraging technology to bring a community closer together. Twitter could solve this problem, but I need to know who to follow. With hyper-local services like Yik Yak, I wouldn't need to follow anyone. The information would just be there. >if taking down an app could save a kid's life then shouldn't we do it? It's not technology's problem, it's society's. We could save millions of lives by getting rid of cars. Thousands by getting rid of cell phones. There's a reason we don't do that. There's a much easier answer to the problem of how to protect children from being bullied on Yik Yak: teach your kids the value of walking away.

sciguy77 12y ago
> That reason is alerting people around you to things going on. If I see a firetruck going past my office, I'm going to want to know where it's headed, for a number of reasons (is there anyone I know involved, are people safe, am I going to be delayed getting home, am I in any danger). Local news isn't going to pick up every fire department response. Or in more positive ideas, a spontaneous block party is happening down at the local ice cream shop. I'd love to walk down there, but I don't know it's happening. Hyper local services would be incredibly useful with leveraging technology to bring a community closer together. Twitter could solve this problem, but I need to know who to follow. With hyper-local services like Yik Yak, I wouldn't need to follow anyone. The information would just be there. Ok, so you want a local information app (Circle?). Why does anonymity have to be central to such an app? > We could save millions of lives by getting rid of cars. Cars exist for a clear purpose with clear benefit. Here, the costs are deemed acceptable considering the benefits of rapid travel. What are the benefits of Yik Yak? As I noted in my original post, even the creators of Yik Yak couldn't come up with a "good" example of Yik Yak that followed its anonymous design. > teach your kids the value of walking away Yes, it would be lovely if all parents everywhere instilled morality into their kids. That isn't the case. Some kids have crappy parents, or no parents at all. When a student posts something that causes a death there are two victims: the suicide, and the kid who has to live with the fact that their actions resulted in death. Most of the bullies in the Formspring suicides were kids themselves, too immature to understand the impact of what they were doing.
- the_unknown 12y ago
  As well, I'd like to add a third victim by this lack of morality (well, I'd prefer the term civility but I'm good with either in a pinch!). Society as a whole. Although we'd like all kids to be rational, understanding, and mature they simply aren't. I don't think many adults are either. We're ruled by our emotions and if people insult us (or our hair, clothes, etc..) we feel awful on some level even if we know not to care about the insult. Kids even more so. If we could all be reasonable, rational, respectful we'd be good. But the jerks of the world have ruined it for us and walking away and burying our heads in the sand isn't always possible or the right thing to do.

dublinben 12y ago

If you're not willing to defend speech you disagree with, or find repulsive, then you don't support free speech. Popular and uncontroversial speech doesn't need any protection, because nobody is trying to ban it.

sciguy77 12y ago
Hate speech is a different matter, that's why it's not legally protected. I believe in the first amendment, both the freedom it grants and the limitations it imposes. Harassing a kid because he's gay or African American isn't protected, and I'm OK with that.
- gojomo 12y ago
  "Hate speech" is legally protected in the United States, unless it incites imminent violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#Supreme_Court_case_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#Supreme_Court_case... With regard to the first amendment in the Bill of Rights, the only "limitations it imposes" are on Congress, not anyone's speech.
lostlogin 12y ago
Not sure where you live, but a lot of what is quoted in the article would be libel - is libel allowed as 'free speech' anywhere? The anonimity of users allows breaking of rules is a bit beyond anything I'd support.
- Taek 12y ago
  I'm not trying to make a blanket case for the acceptability of hate speech or libel, but I think there are situations where allowing them is useful. If you are, deep down, a hateful racist, it's better that everyone else is at least aware. If for the most part you are a nice and reasonable person, there's a chance you'll be corrected and come to accept the incorrectness of your beliefs. On the other side of things, what if everybody does share the opinion that X comes too close to the sexual harassment line on a frequent basis. It's easy to imagine that libel would appear on Yik Yak about X. But now X has a big red flag and is more careful to respect people's boundaries, fearing legal action. This doesn't cover all cases, and doesn't pardon all libel. But especially with anonymous comments (it's not a reputable source like The Guardian), a tool like Yik Yak can help to relieve social tension, or at least bring up topics that everyone is otherwise too afraid to approach.

encoderer 12y ago

Possible, sure. Anything is possible. But you're acting like Formspring bullying was the one discrete event that pushed these kids to suicide. These people were clearly subject to offline bullying as well (by the same people), it just so happens that the formspring variety leaves a paper trail.

sciguy77 12y ago
I'm not an expert on cyberbullying, but there were a few cases that happened when I was in high school. At least at the school I attended, the victims had never been accosted by the bullies in person. But then again, I have a single-digit sample size.

yesiamyourdad 12y ago

As a form of protest or whistleblowing, anonymity is absolutely useful. Wikileaks needed anonymity to really work, and Twitter users in Turkey reporting on unrest there see the need for anonymity. The problem is that while you could conceive of a noble purpose, very few people are going to use it for that purpose, least of all US high school kids.

sciguy77 12y ago
What is the conceived noble purpose of Yik Yak?
- bloaf 12y ago
  Letting kids be terrible to each other so that they can see first hand how it unpleasant it is. Through that experience they will become more compassionate adults.

Taek 12y ago

Yik Yak serves a good purpose. It brings up those things that can't be said without anonymity. It allows you to push people's buttons in a way that you can't when your name is attached. Maybe you are the person that nobody likes but nobody wants to tell you. Yik Yak can help you out. Maybe all of your peers think you are a slut, but nobody says it to your face. Yik Yak brings it out into the open. Yik Yak is dangerous and disruptive because we don't know how to deal with such forward criticism. Even more, nothing on Yik Yak is necessarily true (though you wouldn't say it if you didn't think it seemed at least partially correct). Yik Yak enables forward, hard hitting, juicy criticism (gossip, lies, and simply outrageous nonsense, etc). And while the immediate result is pain, criticism is important on an individual level just as it's important that we can criticize our government. The damage that Yik Yak causes is the result of us not being able to handle criticism. At the highest level, I welcome the flow of knowledge and hope that it leads us to a better place overall. But that doesn't mean I'm ignoring the immediate problems. People have likely committed suicide as a result of all the openness. But that's not a problem with the technology, that's a problem with how we approach ruthless criticism. We might be stuck with the technology, but we aren't stuck with the devastation. It's a different type of bullying and criticism that we need to learn how to deal with, and that we need to prepare our children for.

rtpg 12y ago
You seem to forget the fact that on the internet anonymity makes us even bigger liars and assholes. Also that these are kids going through puberty and the like, not a tribe of super mellow and "rational" people. Even beyond that, extremely personal attacks are rarely "constructive criticism". "This guy is super ugly" isn't going to be super helpful on a personal improvement level. Negative feedback on a personal level also rarely works. This talk was about performance reviews, but it covers the criticisms of people's personality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=1402 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=1402

diminoten 12y ago

I wonder what effect it would have to change "up"/"down" voting into "nice"/"mean". I have a hypothesis that people would tag honestly, but "up" and "down" aren't directly enough associated with moral judgement. Turn the hate against itself by getting people to hate on the text itself instead of hate via the text.