Yik Yak

About

Yik Yak is a mobile group-messaging application that allows users to anonymously post on bulletin boards pre-assigned by their geographic location. The app was founded by developers Brooks Buffington and Tyler Droll in 2013, but shut down in 2017 due to a dwindling userbase and controversy surrounding it from issues with cyberbullying. In August 2021, Yik Yak was relaunched on Apple's iOS platform, promising to resolve issues that plagued it in the past.

History

In November 2013, Yik Yak was launched by developers Brooks Buffington and Tyler Droll after the pair graduated from Furman University in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. By April 2014, Yik Yak amassed $1.5 million in investment from Vaizra Investments, DCM, Kevin Colleran and Azure Capital Partners. By the end of June, Yik Yak received an additional $10 million in funding.

Features

Yik Yak uses GPS to determine a user's location and allows them to view anonymously submitted posts published by people within a 1.5-mile radius. The app cannot be used while the device is within a "geofenced" area, typically including middle schools and high schools. Yik Yak allows users to upvote and downvote posts, which are auto-hidden after receiving a net negative score of five.^[1][2] Users are given a "yakarma" score based on the votes their posts receive. The app has a "Peek" mode, which enables users to view other community feeds without the ability to post or vote.

Controversies

Many schools and universities have banned the app within their grounds, claiming it can be used by students to cyberbully peers. In March, Yik Yak was disabled in the Chicago area after several local high school principals expressed concerns about students using the app inappropriately.^[3] Yik Yak subsequently hired the Vermont-based company Maponics to build "geofenced" areas that would disable the app on devices near middle schools and high schools in the United States.^[4]

Murdered University Student Harassed on Yik Yak Prior to Death

On May 7th, 2014, the Huffington Post reported that Grace Mann, a student who was murdered at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, was the subject of regular harassment on Yik Yak before her death. Mann was a member on the campus of the Feminists United Club, which was filing complaint's against the school's rugby team for sexual harassment – the man accused of killing her is a former member of the same team.

After Mann's death, The Feminists United Club accused the university of not acting on consistent threats the club had received via Yik Yak. In a federal filing, the group claimed to have recorded over 700 different instances of threats against them on the social media messaging tool. They recorded many of them via screenshot, seen below.

The university claimed that it had no ability to punish those responsible for cyberbullying. Yik Yak also told the Huffington Post that they were "extremely disappointed" that their tool had been used for harassment purposes. As of May 2015, the lawsuit is pending.

Yik Yak's 2021 Return

On August 16th, 2021, Yik Yak returned to the iOS App Store for the first time since 2017. The company announced their return via a series of tweets on August 16th, one of them including a video of Brian Baumgartner, a.k.a. Kevin from The Office, promoting the new release (shown below).^[6]

The app's return, in general, inspired many memes and tweets shortly after the announcement (examples shown below), mostly about the app's toxic reputation, the strange "Kevin video," and for Millenials, flashbacks to their college years.

People who were in college during the height of #YikYak seeing it’s coming back. ☠️ pic.twitter.com/bkuB5Udlsk

— TheHattedGamer (@TheHattedGamer) August 16, 2021

Search Interest

External References