Photo Coutesy of Lewis & Clark College Black Student Union
Yik Yak, known by some as “the anonymous Twitter,” has left some students bitter over its allowance of hateful comments and racist threats and just three years after its launch is seeing a rapid decrease in usage around the nation.
The Atlanta startup group had far-reaching ambitions when launching Yik Yak in 2013, with over $60 million dollars pledged by investors, and less than ten people working for them.
But years after its launch, Yik Yak is now seeing a decline in download and user rates. According to Techcrunch.com, Yik Yak’s download rate has fallen since its 2014 ratings. Back then it ranked No. 21 in social networking app downloads. Whereas this year, it’s dropped down to No. 63 among social networking apps and No. 1067 among all iOS apps downloaded.
An anonymous source that previously worked with the company told The Signal that’s because the app is losing the only user base they target, students.
“When you’re a student, say in UGA, you’ll want to see what’s going on around your campus, what students are talking about,” the source said. “But if I’m living in Buckhead, have my own apartment and job, why should I bother downloading and opening the app… to see what my neighbours are talking about?”
The app has already been banned in many high schools due to explicit online content and was recently caught in a crossfire between student bodies and school officials.
After racist comments appeared in the University of Missouri’s Yik Yak network and a University of Mary Washington student was murdered amidst threats posted on the site, some students have asked for a ban of the anonymity-based application.
First in the trend is the College of Illinois, whose president banned Yakkers access to the app from the school’s wireless network. Prior to her decision, the university’s student senate passed a resolution urging the ban.
“While this is only a limited response to the shocking number of racial incidents that have taken place recently, we believe that anyone who holds such backwards and erroneous views should not have the privilege of being able to hide their hate behind a keyboard,” the student government senate released in a statement.
And it’s easy to hide, since Yik Yak doesn’t require any verification of identity, so that anyone can sign up as anyone. You can choose anonymous, a customized handle, or a name – that might as well be someone else’s.
The College of Illinois’ administration repeatedly asked Yik Yak to provide them with the records of the users posting racist and threatening posts. But according to our anonymous source, that’s not going to happen.
“The app is not anonymous. [The people who work at Yik Yak] can find out who you are. They can find all your information. If a police officer or anyone working with the government contacts them they’ll spill the beans,” he said. “Nothing on there is anonymous.”
In Nov. 2015, an Emory student posted a threat to shoot up the school, which was reported to police and the girl was arrested.
So while Yik Yak might have all the information behind anonymous users threatening to shoot up their campus, they’ll only tell divulge that info to a person with a badge.
The ex-employee said there’s a lot more wrong with the app than hateful comments.
“It’s lost its cool factor. Take snapchat, you keep coming back to it. But [Yik Yak] is just the same thing over and over again,” he said. “You can only look at the same corny jokes and same reposts before you lose interest.”
Kelsey Santangelo, a Georgia State junior, said even though she used to use Yik Yak, she now doesn’t find it as entertaining.
“Now I feel like the majority of yaks are someone posting an opinions and everyone hating on it,” she said. “Even if it’s a perfectly normal statement like, “I like burritos”, you’ll see responses like ‘WTF fatty.’ I mean really?”
Atlanta’s talent lack
Yik Yak recently released plans for expansion to San Francisco, after what they called, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, “a lack of skilled talent.”
“When I first started working with them, they were already saying an expansion to San Francisco was inevitable,” the anonymous source said. “That’s where all the action is. Everyone ends up there – it’s Silicon Valley, it’s good for business.”
As for the lack of talent, Yik Yak’s already had multiple trade-offs for the bigger and better, according to the anonymous source. The source said most of the app’s original developers are no longer with Yik Yak, replaced by brighter minds.
“They either have a lower position, or been demoted. Everyone who workers there that had a high title had someone else step in, someone better, ex-Google, ex-Facebook, and take their job. They’ve devoted all this time and energy and the company hires ex-Facebook people to become their boss,” he said.
Although the publication had brief correspondence with Yik Yak, The Signal has yet to hear back about requests for official company comments.
Najwa Hossain contributed to the reporting of this article.
