

Who Spewed That Abuse? Anonymous Yik Yak App Isn’t Telling - mattee
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/09/technology/popular-yik-yak-app-confers-anonymity-and-delivers-abuse.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

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teamhappy
I'm not entirely sure what we're talking about here. Is it that anonymous
communication is a double edged sword or that teenagers are kind of evil?

Either way, it would be very disturbing to see a company give out customer
information without a warrant or similar, wouldn't it? Especially if the
customer is a minor.

~~~
pizza234
> I'm not entirely sure what we're talking about here. Is it that anonymous
> communication is a double edged sword or that teenagers are kind of evil?

We're talking about a medium which mixes the two (and more), creating a very
ill outcome (writing about group rape is no joke, and I'm sure that's not an
exceptional case).

> Either way, it would be very disturbing to see a company give out customer
> information without a warrant or similar, wouldn't it?

This is not correct. From the article:

"A student who felt that he or she had been the target of an attack on Yik Yak
could theoretically pursue defamation charges and subpoena the company to find
out who had written the post."

~~~
teamhappy

        > [...] creating a very ill outcome (writing about group rape is no joke [...]
    

Everybody knows it's not a joke — everybody but kids — _and everybody knows
that._

    
    
        > This is not correct.
    

It's the last item in the FAQ[1]:

    
    
        > The federal Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2701 et seq., 
        > restricts Yik Yak’s disclosure of user account information without
        > the lawful consent of the account holder or unless authorized by a
        > properly issued warrant, court order, or subpoena.
    

Effective 1986[2].

We're not talking about better education, right? Not building/using apps like
Yik Yak?

[1]: [http://support.yikyakapp.com/](http://support.yikyakapp.com/) [2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act)

------
lukev
First, this is a serious problem. Severe bullying is one of the _better_
outcomes if you have unrestricted, anonymous _localized_ trolling.

Second, it seems like this could be easily fixed without compromising
anonymity, using standard moderation techniques. And Yik Yak can in theory do
even better than an online discussion board - acquiring a new phone number is
much higher cost than creating a new online account.

In fact, this feature could enable Yik Yak to be one of the _better_ online
communities, since effective moderation is actually possible while still
maintaining anonymity.

~~~
bdcravens
_acquiring a new phone number is much higher cost than creating a new online
account_

Not really. Apps like Burner let you get a temporary phone number for $3-4
(well, that is still a higher cost, but makes switching around more or less
trivial)

~~~
wutbrodo
>> acquiring a new phone number is much higher cost than creating a new online
account

> Not really.

That is a much higher cost. The conversation around microtransactions is in
large part about the cognitive load of having to pay for each action, and
something as high as $3-4 is significantly more. I can't imagine that wouldn't
deter large numbers of casual bullies, and I can't see that not having a
significant effect on bullying in general.

------
hyperion2010
It always boggles my mind that people would rather not see the true nature and
thoughts of their community than actually address the underlying social
environment that makes those thoughts acceptable to air. Further I find it
worrying that people's response is to want to hunt down and punish individual
people for airing thoughts when on YY it is clear that the only way they stay
visible is because a GROUP of people actively agrees with them.

Don't you WANT to know that there are biggots out there so you can actually
address the problem!??!

Ostriches, ostriches everywhere.

~~~
pizza234
This is an oversimplification, which is not taking into account human nature
and especially social dynamics, which makes things more complex.

Being offensive towards somebody, in isolation, is "normal", but in the
context of a group of peers, imitation can fuel a chain reaction, which turns
individual offense to group aggression. Obviously we're talking about verbal
aggression, but when somebody writes about gang rape, then it's serious
business even if it's not real.

There is a significant difference between "airing thoughts" and cyberbullying.

Those are not necessarily "agreed thoughts"; in the context, they can be seen
as "lack" of thought, that is, groupthink of people who has little to do with
their minds in a certain moment.

Selling a gun is one thing. Putting a gun in a public place with a sign with
written "use me" is a very different thing. In the same way, internet comments
are already used to channel anger because of their anonymity; if a medium adds
groupthink and proximity to anonymity, things develop on a different level.

~~~
hyperion2010
I don't see how this is an oversimplification. Airing thoughts are different
from bullying only in so far as who hears them. This can be seen from the fact
that nearly all uni harassment policies define harassment based on the
"victim's" perception of being harassed regardless of the intent of the
"perpetrator." Furthermore you can't bully someone who refuses to grant you
power over their emotions, you can call them as many names as you want but if
they just laugh at you and move on then good luck.

That people can be affected by words that people write about them and feel bad
as a result is sort of taken for granted (I usually go on a rant at this point
about how insane I find it that people willingly grant others power over their
feelings but that doesn't usually go over well). The fact that someone can now
hear what other people are saying about them is the least of the problems.
Spreading rumors behind someone's back can be far more damaging not only to
the individual but also to the community as a whole. The fact that anonymity
lowers the threshold for public expression of thoughts means that things that
were previously aired in private in closed circles are now visible.

From the perspective of someone who cares about their community the fact that
I can now see hateful behavior is critical for taking action to prevent REAL
harm that can arise from group think. The fact that people are far more likely
to agree with something (eg by voting) than actually state it themselves does
exacerbate this problem, but upvoting of hurtful comments is a community
problem and reveals that something fundamental has broken down in that
community and needs to be addressed at the level of the community. I would
even argue that it is worse than thoughtless or unthinking: it is habitual,
and that makes it even harder to combat.

As a final note hateful speech is something that you don't only want to
address when someone is offended by it. The fact that someone is not bothered
by being called names does not mean that the behavior of name calling does not
need to be immediately addressed and corrected. Right now the only time this
happens is when someone complains which is an absolutely horrible system.

------
ocb
Interestingly enough, my experience using Yik Yak at a small liberal arts
college is quite different. As the article notes, posts get removed if their
score reaches -5. My observations are that basically any post with any
negative connotations whatsoever is almost immediately downvoted to deletion.
It's the opposite of what this article describes: overmoderation rather than
undermoderation.

~~~
lkbm
Here at UT Austin, racism and sexism abound on Yik Yak. Lots of frats and
sororities around, so making fun of minorities, calling members of
$unpopular_sorority fat, or calling $unpopular-frat gay (naturally the two
insults of choice) is a good way to get upvotes.

~~~
iolothebard
So it's just a reflection of the userbase. Not remotely shocking.

------
shiggerino
I recently read an online conversation about how to spoof GPS coordinates to
get in on and even skewing discourse in target areas. Sounds like a lot of
fun, unless of course you factor in that most users probably aren't mature
enough to critically judge what appears on their screens.

------
itsjareds
My university is one of the universities listed in the article for having
issues with Yik Yak. The university president was rumored to be considering
banning the app, which is a functionality supported by the creators to fence
off a certain geographical region. The yaks made in my area can get
particularly nasty, but I'm not sure what the appropriate response should be.
Most of them aren't specific enough to be illegal - inciting violence,
harassment, etc.

Comments made on Yik Yak also was a big motivator for a series of protests on
my campus around the time of the Ferguson protests, which is unusual for a
socially conservative campus with little social activism.

~~~
wongarsu
My opinion on the appropriate response: downvote, click report and ignore.

I know that can be hard, and comments can be hurtful. But unless the internet
changes in a fundamental way, we have to learn not to take attacks from
strangers personally.

Unless of course you happen to know who does it. You can also try changing the
culture, but that's hard on the scale of a college.

------
hiringcat2
I was wondering this weekend about an anonymous chat app, where abusive or
nasty comments were changed by the service, in one of many ways, like
reversing the focus of the comment, negating it, or simply changing it to
something like "I like roses; they are pretty and smell nice". And the more
someone tries to be obnoxious, the more it changes their comments. Almost like
a chat version of the justice zone from the BBC comedy series Red Dwarf, where
you were not able to do any wrong, as it came straight back to you.

Might just give it a go...

------
username223
How could there be a purer application of Greater Internet F-wad Theory[1]?
Both the founders and the funders[2] should be ashamed.

[1] [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/](http://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak)

------
dkarapetyan
Two fraternity guys make an app for anonymous posts. Genius! Never in a
million years would I think this was something worthwhile to make or that it
would contribute in any meaningful way to any community. The bit about
empowering individuals in a community to level the playing field is especially
hilarious.

The problem is that 20-somethings don't have the required gray matter to
foresee the consequences of their actions and by many definitions they're not
even fully realized humans yet. I attribute this trend of throwing money at
such individuals to the geniuses in SV like PG, a16z, etc. It turns out you
don't need fully realized humans to do a random walk among shitty ideas to see
if one of them sticks. Evolutionary tactics will do it for you.

------
nitwit005
I'd be curious if the content of these posts is genuinely worse than the
things they say to each other with boring old human speech.

Just because the awful-ness isn't normally shouted into a megaphone, doesn't
mean it's not there. My high school shortened the lunch break because of how
horrible the girls were being to each-other when they had free time. Not
effective of course.

------
wonsler
I was going to gloat about how I don't use something like yik yak, but then I
realized I'm anonymous here, and that HN employs heavy handed moderation to
deal with near anonymous chat.

~~~
hyperion2010
Except that you aren't anonymous here. You are pseudonymous which is very
different because you have a consistent identifier allowing people to interact
with you and review your history and posts and attack you. When you are
anonymous it would require significant effort to identify a user using lexical
analysis or the like and the false positive rate would likely be quite high.

------
tedks
It's interesting how many anti-Yik Yak posts have been on HN recently. Maybe a
competitor is trying to poison the well with some PR heckling.

~~~
jonnathanson
Yik Yak has been racking up some controversial media coverage for quite some
time now, and before it came along, some of its predecessors were doing the
same. I doubt this is the result of some intentional strategy on a
competitor's part. And if it were, it's a short-sighted strategy. All that
this bad press is accomplishing is getting Yik Yak more and more coverage, and
thus, more and more public exposure. It might also have a "forbidden fruit"
effect: making non-users more and more curious about using it.

I'm sure you've heard the old expression, "No publicity is bad publicity."
There's some truth to that, especially when your business or brand kinda-sorta
benefits from being seen as edgy or controversial.

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personjerry
> There were dozens of posts, most demeaning, many using crude, sexually
> explicit language and imagery.

A little misleading; to be clear, there are no image posts on Yik Yak.

~~~
philwelch
[https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=define:...](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=define:imagery&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

"visually descriptive or figurative language"

~~~
personjerry
I know what "imagery" means--but not everyone has English as their first
language, or some people may skim it

------
return0
This is really disturbing and i think its the tipping point on anonymity. I
don't know about you but i'm ready to give up my freedoms for the sake of some
people not being offended. Shutting down yikyak or suing them to death would
be a good start.

