Yik Yak: How the Anonymous Forum Is Tearing Conn’s Community Apart

Courtesy of Kevin Lieue

Madeline Motes:

Whether you post on it, look at it, or never open it, we can all agree that the kind of culture Yik Yak creates is controversial and even harmful to the people and the values we strive to uphold at Connecticut College. 

Recently, there have been multiple posts that have embarrassed and angered many people at Conn. Our Honor Code states that “We will never, by any selfish or other unworthy act, dishonor this our College; individually and collectively we will foster her ideals and do our utmost to instill a respect in those among us who fail in their responsibility; unceasingly we will strive to quicken a realization of our common duty and obligation to our College. And thus in manifold service we will render our Alma Mater greater, worthier and more beautiful.”

Yik Yak posts are frequently offensive and outright violate the Honor Code. They continue to make students, staff, and faculty extremely uncomfortable. 

I personally know students who have had their names insufficiently censored in posts describing their private and sensitive information for everyone to see, judge, and ridicule. Yik Yak users at Conn have also bullied and harassed other students. 

Just last week, a student made an incredibly disturbing threat that got taken down. Another post referred to a specific group of students who frequent the Harris atrium, calling them “freaks” and saying they should be euthanized. If this behavior is what the forum is perpetuating, then there is an extremely serious problem.

Yik Yak doesn’t just impact students. One of the school’s deans has been referred to as “freaky,” and people have spread rumors about them “sucking toes and eating ass.” They have expressed concerns about their reputation and perception as safe authority figures for people to turn to if some student or staff member believes what they read about them on the app. They have family and are worried about what their loved ones might think if they see these posts. 

Yik Yak users have certainly taken it too far. They have bullied and harassed people to the point where some have admitted to considering self-harm or worse. 

Yik Yak has been directly linked to disturbing and terrible tragedies in the past. In 2015, a student at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia was murdered after rampant threats of rape and euthanization on Yik Yak. The student making those threats posted that he was going to tie her and her friends “to the radiator and grape them in the mouth.” She reported the threats to the school and said she felt unsafe. A week later, she was killed. 

Although the new version of Yik Yak has additional moderation and restrictions about what you can post, students are still finding ways to circumvent these and post offensive content anyway, such as by changing, adding to, or removing a letter from a censored term.

Several schools have tried to address this issue by banning Yik Yak, and that number is growing. These schools include Clemson, Idaho State, Emory, St. Louis University, John Brown University, Utica, and more. UNC is trying to ban it as well.

However, a student-driven change in culture would be more effective and efficient than banning the app. If we can collectively decide to stop this hate and delete the app, then it loses its power. As students, this is something we have control over. We get to decide if we are contributing to a community of bullying, harassment, discrimination, hate, and violence. Keeping Yik Yak reinforces its power. 

Wade Anthony:

The anonymous forum Yik Yak has become somewhat of a staple here at Connecticut College. I hardly ever go more than a few days without hearing someone say, “Did you see what’s on Yik Yak?” The majority of the time, the person is referencing some (often hilarious) post about a relatable aspect of life here at Conn, or perhaps a picture of a squirrel soaking up some rays of sun on a campus sculpture (which went “viral” last week). However, disturbingly often, the “Yak” in question is of a more sinister nature. Bullying, harassment, racism, homophobia, and more are rampant on the social media platform, as its anonymous nature brings out the worst in its users. In 2017, Yik Yak shut down due to an overwhelming quantity of these posts, as well as several cases of legal action taken against users who threatened shootings, bombings, hate crimes, and sexual assault on their campuses. Yet roughly two years ago, Yik Yak reemerged around the country to once again erode the foundations of trust, respect, and dignity on college campuses. 

While many of the app’s users at Conn enjoy Yik Yak as little more than an avenue to disseminate “tea” (gossip), satire, and often blatant misinformation to gain attention, some utilize the app as a valuable tool. In particular, the anonymous nature of Yik Yak posts makes it a powerful outlet for free speech on campus. We should not overlook this element of the app, as it provides a forum for students to express their thoughts on everything from Harris food to international politics without fear of judgment or immediate ramifications. There is no other outlet on campus that enables free speech in this manner, which leads users to flock to the app in the wake of major campus, national, or global events to gauge their peers’ uncensored and authentic opinions. 

For this reason, the college’s administrators monitor the activities on the app as well—which became widely known during last year’s protests and occupations. After any major College announcement or event, admins will monitor the app to gauge students’ reactions and opinions. In theory, this makes a lot of sense as Yik Yak serves as an unparalleled forum for student free expression and is, thus, perhaps the most effective way to poll the student body on their authentic opinions. The admins might get more out of one week of Yik Yak posts than the entirety of the recent NSSE survey. 

However, this depends on one massive assumption—that posts reflect authentic opinions. On an app notorious for bullying, harassment, misinformation, and satire, this feels like a huge gamble for administrators to make, perhaps even an irresponsible one. Yes, users can post honest and productive thoughts on the forum. But under the shroud of anonymity and in a system that incentivizes the outrageous and extreme with upvotes, you have to take everything you see on Yik Yak with one enormous grain of salt. I think this is something we all, as students, know and understand, considering our generation’s internet exposure and literacy. It’s the trite expression “Don’t believe what you see on the internet” in action, which is unfortunately increasingly accurate. Considering this, I struggle to see how admins’ monitoring of the app achieves anything more than impeding the flow of information around the student body, as their illusive presence creates fear and mistrust in an already grossly untrustworthy environment. 

However, the administration monitoring of the app is hardly its most problematic element. Unfortunately, Yik Yak’s greatest strength is also its greatest flaw. Its anonymous nature undermines its value as a free speech platform. The College’s website on freedom of expression states, “Free speech, in other words, is not free of consequences.” This is an aspect of free speech worldwide, but Yik Yaks’ anonymous nature enables users to evade the consequences of their speech (except in extreme circumstances). This violates the Honor Code’s request that “students be accountable for their actions and conduct themselves with integrity, civility, and the utmost respect for the dignity of all human beings” disturbingly easily under the veil of anonymity.  

These kinds of comments happen every day on Yik Yak. Users make posts that violate students, professors, and administrators’ dignity, privacy, and humanity. On the extreme, these posts can be racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic, and more. While there are now systems to remove offensive and illegal content from Yik Yak, we’ve all seen screenshots of this kind of content. Remember that nothing on the internet ever goes away. Yes—you can no longer post people’s names, but at a school of 1,900 students, it only takes initials and a few descriptors for the word to spread of the individual’s true identity. Don’t get me wrong, there are hilarious and innocent posts on Yik Yak all the time, and the app can serve as a great way to spread information and bring the student body together. Unfortunately, a few bad apples have spoiled the barrel for me, and I simply cannot overlook the blatant corrosive effect the app has on this community. 

Banning Yik Yak might seem like a logical solution to the problem. However, it is unfortunately not that simple. While several higher education institutions nationwide have banned the platform from campus wifi, this is more symbolic than anything, as the app remains accessible on cellular data. And honestly, I think the administration banning the app would do more harm than good. It would overstep the boundary between the administration and the student body and would impede the rights to autonomy and individuality, which we are entitled to as students and adults. 

But this can only be the case if we, the students, actually behave like adults. Yik Yak feels to me like something that should have been left behind in high school at a time when our brains were undeveloped, full of hormones, and stupidity. “Yaks,” “Yakarma,” upvotes, and downvotes do not feel like things the future leaders of the world should be concerned with. Put bluntly, the app reeks of immaturity at best and bigotry and violence at worst, and I think we could all do better. If users continue to abuse anonymity by posting vile filth, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Yik Yak meet its demise, just as we did in 2017. But while we wait for that day to come, I propose we all get a head start and hit that uninstall button now.