Yik Yak Not a Favorite of All Students

Key Takeaways:

• The resurface of Yik Yak.
• The different types of posts on Yik Yak that affect students.
• The spread of rumors through Yik Yak.

Some Pitt State students feel disappointed and angry about the constant offensive and out-of-place posts that appear on a daily basis on the social networking service.

“I think that the app is problematic, but it is an app that allows us to express ourselves,” said Juan Ignacio Mollo, a student at Pitt State.

Yik Yak became one of the most popular platforms among students when it resurfaced last year after being shut down since 2017. On Yik Yak, people can post comments, or “Yaks,” anonymously.

However, because all posts are anonymously, some people say defaming or offensive things without any repercussions, which is why this platform is so controversial. Pitt State is no exception.

“I feel like most people use the app to say the first thing that comes to their mind,” said Sharon Caballero, another Pitt State student.

Students post about different kind of topics like classes, parking, dorm problems, personal issues and many other things. The problem comes when people start posting private things about other people, giving first and last names in some cases.

Some even spread rumors about other people or group of people. There have also been some racist posts towards women, LGBTQ+ people and African-American people.

Since the spring semester started, there have been constant Yaks about the football team, frats and targeted people on campus. These targeted people are normally women that attend Pitt State, and when these posts come up, they usually say the names of said women.

A few weeks ago, one of those posts mentioned an intimate situation between two women. Whether it was true or not, most of the posts like this are meant to cause rumors.

“It is wrong to say certain things there,” Caballero said.

She also mentioned a post she saw claiming that certain football team members had STDs.

“People automatically assume that it is true and start spreading the word without knowing if it is actually true,” Caballero said.

These comments then turn into rumors that eventually spread throughout campus and can, at some point, potentially affect students.

“This type of stuff happens because there is not an effective way of censorship,” Mollo said.

As people read these posts, they have the option to upvote or downvote them, which is one of the new “improvements” of the app. When a post is downvoted more than five times, the post is removed from the platform. There are other security measures that were added before the relaunch. However, most of the conflicting posts that are shown in the area are not taken down because instead of downvoting them, they incentive people to keep posting, which causes more conflict and stress to students.

Another common problem is that people tend to stay quiet when these comments appear because of the fear of retaliation, even though posts on Yik Yak are anonymous.

“If someone from my inner circle has been mentioned, I would let them know so that they can do something about it,” Mollo said.

But directly countering offensive posts has risks. Even if a commenter knows that whatever is being said is wrong, they are sometimes pushed to stay out of it to be safe from being targeted themselves. For example, one post said that women should act differently if they didn’t want to end up a victim of sexual assault. Soon after that post appeared on the feed, a few people commented on them countering what the post said and saying that it was wrong of that person to say such a thing.

The same person who wrote the original post then started offending the person trying to make them understand that such comments are not appropriate. Unfortunately, the post was never eliminated from the feed because of the amount of upvotes it had compared to the amount of downvotes.

Mollo said that he thinks that people like to be problematic and spread rumors around campus. He also added that the app should do more to regulate or make sure these types of posts don’t happen so often as they do.