Yik Yak Raises Controversy On College Campuses 367
HughPickens.com writes Jonathan Mahler writes in the NYT that just as Facebook swept through the dorm rooms of America's college students a decade ago, the social app Yik Yak, which shows anonymous messages from users within a 1.5-mile radius is now taking college campuses by storm. "Think of it as a virtual community bulletin board — or maybe a virtual bathroom wall at the student union," writes Mahler. "It has become the go-to social feed for college students across the country to commiserate about finals, to find a party or to crack a joke about a rival school." While much of the chatter is harmless, some of it is not. "Yik Yak is the Wild West of anonymous social apps," says Danielle Keats Citron. "It is being increasingly used by young people in a really intimidating and destructive way." Since the app's introduction a little more than a year ago, Yik Yak has been used to issue threats of mass violence on more than a dozen college campuses, including the University of North Carolina, Michigan State University and Penn State. Racist, homophobic and misogynist "yaks" have generated controversy at many more, among them Clemson, Emory, Colgate and the University of Texas. At Kenyon College, a "yakker" proposed a gang rape at the school's women's center.
Colleges are largely powerless to deal with the havoc Yik Yak is wreaking. The app's privacy policy prevents schools from identifying users without a subpoena, court order or search warrant, or an emergency request from a law-enforcement official with a compelling claim of imminent harm. Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that "banning Yik Yak on campuses might be unconstitutional," especially at public universities or private colleges in California where the so-called Leonard Law protects free speech. She said it would be like banning all bulletin boards in a school just because someone posted a racist comment on one of the boards. In one sense, the problem with Yik Yak is a familiar one. Anyone who has browsed the comments of an Internet post is familiar with the sorts of intolerant, impulsive rhetoric that the cover of anonymity tends to invite. But Yik Yak's particular design can produce especially harmful consequences, its critics say. "It's a problem with the Internet culture in general, but when you add this hyper-local dimension to it, it takes on a more disturbing dimension," says Elias Aboujaoude." "You don't know where the aggression is coming from, but you know it's very close to you."
Colleges are largely powerless to deal with the havoc Yik Yak is wreaking. The app's privacy policy prevents schools from identifying users without a subpoena, court order or search warrant, or an emergency request from a law-enforcement official with a compelling claim of imminent harm. Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that "banning Yik Yak on campuses might be unconstitutional," especially at public universities or private colleges in California where the so-called Leonard Law protects free speech. She said it would be like banning all bulletin boards in a school just because someone posted a racist comment on one of the boards. In one sense, the problem with Yik Yak is a familiar one. Anyone who has browsed the comments of an Internet post is familiar with the sorts of intolerant, impulsive rhetoric that the cover of anonymity tends to invite. But Yik Yak's particular design can produce especially harmful consequences, its critics say. "It's a problem with the Internet culture in general, but when you add this hyper-local dimension to it, it takes on a more disturbing dimension," says Elias Aboujaoude." "You don't know where the aggression is coming from, but you know it's very close to you."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, who is making the argument that we should "sacrifice free speech for a better society"? That sounds positively Orwellian. Or something from China, where the government runs a massive censorship operation.
Liberal folks, this is your issue. The conservatives and libertarians are all over preserving the right to speech. Where is your support for the same? Speech is not action, it's just someone's opinion. Speech cannot hurt you, but the lack of freedom to speak most definitely can. You cannot "spea
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
OK, Try listening to some television recorded in the 1970s or 1980s and then listen to today's equivalent.
That was one of the amusing side effects of the 40th anniversary of SNL, where they played selected shows from way back when. One at least one occasion they prefaced the show with a message basically stating that this was a show from another era, and that's how they were back then (in addition to the messages stating that the shows originally payed at a later time slot)
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:4, Insightful)
But when anonymity is achieved, as in trolls on the net and this service, people show their true colors.
You have no way of knowing if that's true or not.
I can post random shit on the Internet for random reasons that have absolutely no correlation to any personal beliefs or positions on various subjects and you cannot, with accuracy, determine what my true thoughts are.
Trolls can be gross and their posts can be received poorly, but assigning an accurate profile to the troll is impossible.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, Try listening to some television recorded in the 1970s or 1980s and then listen to today's equivalent. Back then, people would identify each other by ethnicity and criticize each other openly. Nada today. Demonstrates a clear censorship, and calling it 'self-censorship' is bullshit, it's a centrally mandated process. Everyone feels better, right?
What you call self-censorship I would call being civil. A society establishes rules and norms for behaviors it considers acceptable, and individuals are still free to act contrary to those norms; however such actions are subject to the condemnation of society at large.
But when anonymity is achieved, as in trolls on the net and this service, people show their true colors.
Being oblivious to the process doesn't mean it didn't happen.
There are always assholes in this world; and most are cowards who would hide behind anonymity to avoid getting their ass kicked. Others simply think it's funny without regard to the consequences of their actions; that is especially true, as studies show, of teenagers who have not yet fully developed the capacity to think their actions through to possible consequences.
I am all for free speech, even what I would find distasteful, since censoring it doesn't allow people to address issues it raises and the best way to address bad ideas is to expose them to the light of day. However, schools also have the problem of balancing speech with acting in the face of a threat. It's all well and good to say most of them are simply juvenile jokes, even if they do hurt others, and will not be acted on; however how do you separate those from a real threat. More importantly, how do accomplish that without trampling on free speech rights?
As an aside, I find the Leonard Law interesting in that it compels private institutions to comply with government limit son restricting speech. What I find interesting is it was proposed by a Republican, which goes to show they are for private property rights and limited government until someone does something they don't like and then the "heavy hand" of "government overreach" is brought out to compile someone to comply with their viewpoint of what is correct. Sometimes I think the two parties in the US should merge and just call themselves the Hypocrisy Party with the head of an ass and the body of an elephant to demonstrate their thinking capacity and view of the proper size of a government.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a bipartisan issue. The liberals want to ban things they don't like and so do the conservatives. Free speech is fine as long as you don't say things that aren't acceptable. I remember that people used to have much thicker skin though about 4 or 5 decades ago. Now if you hurt someone's feelings it's the end of the world. I'm pretty sure the world wont end with a bang or a whimper but a whine.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:4, Insightful)
If somebody makes a racist comment to somebody, they SHOULD be called out for it. If it was unintentional, then they SHOULD apologize and say so.
The need to "call people out" for saying something you don't agree with or that offends you is a key contributor to social problems you have enumerated.
All those shouting intolerance will not be tolerated with a straight face oblivious to the irony of their remarks are only contributing to an increasingly less free brittle society.
When people learn to respect the racist and the crackpot as much as they dislike their remarks then and only then will real progress have been made.
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It may be distasteful and offensive to some...but it is still protected and free speech, as long as you aren't threatening anyone with direct harm.
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Funny, I still speak pretty much the SAME way I used t
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, who is making the argument that we should "sacrifice free speech for a better society"?
The answer is this person, among others: http://www.thecrimson.com/colu... [thecrimson.com]
Free, yes but anonymous? (Score:3)
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much everyone who mentions "hate speech" as an issue. Which, of course, includes the governments of every country with hate speech laws....
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, who is making the argument that we should "sacrifice free speech for a better society"?
Pretty much every university in the U.S. and Europe at this point. Saying the wrong thing that offends someone on a college campus these days will get you kicked out faster than banging Dean Wormer's wife. You don't even have real free speech rights anymore in the few "free speech areas" that they've allotted. It's all-but-considered assault if you make a comment that can even be CONSTRUED as offensive.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Funny)
will get you kicked out faster than banging Dean Wormer's wife.
Only if you are on double secret probation.
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Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Funny)
I was wondering what got you on double secret probation. I was on secret probation once. I didn't find out until suspension that I was ever on probation.
Nothing much:
dropped a whole truckload of fizzies into the varsity swim meet
delivered the medical school cadavers to the alumni dinner
filled trees with underwear every Halloween
toilets exploding in the spring
As a result, seven years of college down the drain.
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What's wrong with that? Freedom of expression doesn't have anything to do with freedom from the consequences of being a jackass.
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Liberal folks, this is your issue. The conservatives and libertarians are all over preserving the right to speech.
This, from the party that is attempting to ban the term "climate change"
Remember this? http://www.miamiherald.com/new... [miamiherald.com] It's kinda recent...
I don't know why "free speech" seems to lose all its value when NOT being used to threaten women.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Interesting)
Liberals are by definition "all over preserving the right to speech".
Authoritarian progressives are not.
Authoritarian progressives have taken over some of the political and social organs often associated in popular thought with "liberalism". I think this can be traced back to the 1988 Presidential campaign, when Bush attacked Dukakis as a "card carrying member of the ACLU", and rather than pushing back with "yes, I support civil liberties as enshrined in the Bill of Rights -- you don't? Shame on you!", the Democrats began a retreat from those values.
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Conservatives are front and centre when it comes to increasing the police state. How is that supporting freedom of speech?
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:4, Insightful)
Censorship LAW might not apply if there's no governement action involved. Censorship itself still does.
Freedom of speech does not mean you can come into my hose by force and demand I listen to you rant about Jeebus.
Freedom of speech does not allow you to call 911 and swat me.
Freedom of speech does not allow you to make fraudulent bomb threats ot terrorist threats.
Threats of violence are not covered.
Opposing opinions and not being arrested for holding those opinions and speaking out about them are covered.
And call ing the everyday things that we do to be civilized censorship are simply stupid. I saw a very attractive woman at breakfast this morning. In that definition I self-censored myself from trying to engage in sex with her.
as for Yik-Yak's policy of not giving out names without a subpoena, well, that can be taken care of quickly. I'm sure everyon except the anarchists would simply love to know who the anonymous asshat was who called in whatever bogus threat they made.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:4, Informative)
Threats of violence are not covered.
Threats of violence are absolutely covered, if a reasonable person would not take the threat seriously. That's the part the speech-banners and fascists keep forgetting. It would be difficult to release a violent work of fiction otherwise (or would you like to ban those too? video games too maybe?).
We seriously need to stop being so scared all the time. That is the root of all this growing totalitarianism. Simple fear and cowardice.
I saw a very attractive woman at breakfast this morning. In that definition I self-censored myself from trying to engage in sex with her.
I saw one too, and did have sex with her! Dating is fun. But we were talking about free speech - you have to be on the kooky end of the left to conflate speech with rape, which I guess is what you meant?
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If it was done in a similar manner to much of the harassment being discussed, you'd be leaving threatening notes in their cube/office or on their voice mail.
You'd be out pretty quick, or arrested.
Of course not, because the One Ring isn't real and he's a kid. Mentally stunted manchildre
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Do not lump conservatives with libertarians. Conservatives are just as happy to sensor speech that they do not like because it is anti-Christian/American or too Muslim/Mexican/foreign sounding.
And modern day Libertarians are Just Republicans pretending to be Libertarians. A particularly noxious combination.
Okay, you can start swearing at me now.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Insightful)
Attempt to say or write anything that is outside the bounds of political correctness and the peer groups will swoop in and ostracize you regardless of how benign the comment was.
Hil-fucking-larious. You demonstrate the fallacy so many people have about free speech.
Let me lay it out for you:
You are allowed to have your opinion.
They are allowed to have theirs
It does not mean you posit what you like, and no one is allowed to respond to it.
That isn't free speech at all.
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The problem with something like YikYak is you loose the context if whatever is said. If someone says something in front of people then they also get to know stuff like: are they drunk; have they just been dumped; did they just get a bad mark; does it even look like they believe what they are saying. Put it on YikYak and all that is gone, and shorn of the context people have a tendancy to believe. THEN things can spiral out of control.
Not saying its good or bad, but its not just a free speech issue.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Interesting)
The words are just symbols. The emotions you attach to them are your own. The problem is projection: "the only way I could say that is if I were a bad person. Therefore, the person who said it is a bad person." But that psychological logic forgets humor, lies, and bots.
More free speech, leading to more virtual violence, should reduce the need for physical violence. We should be fighting ISIS's words on social media, not trying to ban them.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Interesting)
That isn't really how people proejct though, a person seldom attributes his own actions to his own nature. Its more like "I said this because I was upset" or "I said that because he was an asshole and deserved to hear it." whereas "he said that because he is a racist" or "he said that because he is an asshole".
That would be more how people tend to actually think about things.... I stole from the store because I ...was bored and seeking thrills or .... was hungry and needed money.
You stole from the store because you think its ok to steal and you are entitled to it.
See how different we can be. I do everything for exeternal reasons, everyone else just follows their nature.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Insightful)
The words are just symbols. The emotions you attach to them are your own. The problem is projection:
Back when I was in school, we had a rash of bomb threats. All fake.
But every time, they evacuated the school. Instead of being in a nice warm building we shivered outside in the cold.
Eventually, they caught the kid responsible for doing this.
Was his free speech violated because he was arrested for making those threats?
Fast forward to modern times.....
Now here are some cases below, where threats were made, and some students were arrested
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/n... [psu.edu]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
Were their free speech rights violated?
If someone calls you and tells you there is a bomb planted in your house are you going to ignore it? Was the person just exercising their free speech to get you all freaked out and leave the place?
People get so confused about free speech. It's always good to remember the old adage - The rights of your fist end abruptly at my face. Purposeful disruption by threats of violence are never appropriate.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the classic harsh internet reality that society doesn't like to face. To have true free speech, you must have anonymity. But some of that free speech is going to be things that society isn't used to hearing (and doesn't want to hear), because society isn't used to true anonymity.
Look at it as an insight into how people REALLY feel--when they're not compelled by threat of expulsion/arrest/harassment to be polite and politically correct.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Insightful)
Not this.
Look at it as an insight into how people REALLY feel ...
The cloak of anonymity is not the cloak of truthfulness.
"Troll," is not a new or complex concept. It is graffiti. Sure, some of it is offensive or upsetting, but we should be concerned only when an ordinace of law has been violated.
For instance, spray painting the "N" word on public places is classified as hate speech. Changing that to, "The mayor sux." would simply be defacing property, at best.
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And thus you demonstrate why hate speech laws are broken by design. I dont have to like it but people have the right to be idiots and assholes, until they do something tangible.
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Hate speech laws are broken by what/which design? Elaborate.
My point was that people have to do something tangible: "For instance, spray painting the "N" word on public places is classified as hate speech. Changing that to, "The mayor sux." would simply be defacing property, at best."
What's your point?
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Hate speech laws are broken as they make nonviolent speech a crime. They do not require that it was intended to cause panic (the classic shouting fire in a crowded theater) or instruct others to do harm. It makes a crime of failing to use PC speech.
In your example neither should be more than defacing public property.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:4, Insightful)
You are simply 100% against free speech, is the point.
Only deeply offensive speech needs protection - the freedom of agreeable speech is meaningless. There is no gap between "banning hate speech" and "ending free speech". The former is simply a euphemism for the latter.
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Spraypainting racial slurs wouldn't be hate speech in most places, with the possible very specific exceptions of places like Germany with things like Naziism.
Where I live, the hate speech laws require that you're inciting violence against a particular group. So "lefties suck" wouldn't be hate speech, but "kill all lefties" could be.
You could argue that spray painting racial slurs falls afoul of the "fighting words" clause in the US first amendment, except that judicial precedent pretty much papers over tha
Reality of YikYak (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the harsh reality:
On the campus I work for, there have been death threats posted on YikYak. Are they credible? There's no way to know. Because we don't know who's sending them. So they have to be treated as credible—and the university simply doesn't have the resources to provide even one person with 24/7 protection, let alone the half-dozen or so that the death threats were issued against.
So the administration's response was basically, "We cannot protect you if someone is determined to get at you. If you believe the threats are credible, then our best recommendation is for you to leave the campus." And some of them did. I believe they came back after winter break, but still, they missed final exams, and I have no idea how much hassle that's going to cause them in the long run.
Which all means that if you are a person who has a grudge against someone else on campus, and few scruples, you can get them more or less kicked off of campus by issuing an anonymous death threat against them on YikYak.
Is that the kind of "harsh reality" you think is appropriate? Where people who are just trying to get a decent education (and paying a pretty penny for it) can be forced to make the choice between abandoning it, and risking their lives by staying on campus, just because some asshole with an anonymous YikYak account wants them to?
I get the importance of anonymity in free speech, believe me. But free speech is a means to an end, not an end in itself. That end, broadly, is a free society. And society works because bad actors can be called to account for their bad actions. If people can do bad things without threat of consequence, the whole thing starts to fall apart.
Dan Aris
Re:Reality of YikYak (Score:5, Informative)
On the campus I work for, there have been death threats posted on YikYak. Are they credible? There's no way to know. Because we don't know who's sending them. So they have to be treated as credibleâ"and the university simply doesn't have the resources to provide even one person with 24/7 protection, let alone the half-dozen or so that the death threats were issued against.
Dude, that is completely the wrong way to deal with this.
In most jurisdictions, it is a crime to make death threats.
The target of the death threat should report it to police. The police will investigate and get a court order for yikyak to produce the info they have about who made the threat (device, ip address, etc).
Then the police track them down & slap them with handcuffs.
Identitarians Don't Want Police Involvement (Score:4, Insightful)
As the UVA Rape Hoax showed, they don't want the police to handle campus cases because that pesky "due process of law" prevents them from punishing males before they've been convicted.
They prefer Star Chambers where the lives of men can be ruined [bostonglobe.com] without offering them a chance to fight back. Much better for instituting conformkity and social control to the identitarian agenda.
Re:Reality of YikYak (Score:5, Informative)
YikYak runs off phones or via Chrome if you take the time to run YikYak as a package (or whatever the term is) for Chrome. If the device is connected to the school's wifi, they ought be able to get the log-in associated with that IP address at the time of posting, which YikYak stores and readily provides in the case of police investigations.
The campus I work for has basically taken a much more aggressive position on YikYak and we monitor it...as we remember to. YikYak itself is such a pain in the ass and most of the time it's just students bantering like students (I almost wrote idiots, but given how I was in university, I'm in no position to judge). Most of it is complaints and asking where the next party is.
Funny enough, YikYak's moderation system actually makes it really hard to deal with the threats that do pop-up because they get removed after 5 downvotes, meaning it's hard for us to find them before the students remove the threats. We effectively cannot take action despite wanting to. I wouldn't expect the YikYak folk to spend time contacting schools where the threats are occurring, but I hope that they log it well enough to allow institutions to take action if they feel that any one student is consistently using the service to post threats.
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It's the classic harsh internet reality that society doesn't like to face. To have true free speech, you must have anonymity.
But you see grasshopper - no one ever has completely free speech. Never did, never will.
True free speech is like true socialism, or true communism or true capitalism. Won't work, because of inherent flaws of any ideology. So basically, you're let alone as long as you aren't promoting violence or sending in threats. Start up with that shit, and the boom lowers.
pssst - you aren't really anonymous on the web.
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:4, Interesting)
Anonymous speech's purpose is to be able to say things that might be harmful to YOU if you say them. Using anonymous speech to say things that are harmful to OTHERS is cowardly and generally speaking not protected by the First Amendment nor should it.
And who gets to decide which is which? If I say "Black people commit most of the violent crime in this country and it's time we stop excusing them for it" that is certainly an opinion that could get a student expelled on almost any college campus (and quite likely, attacked or threatened by blacks). But a sensitive black student could also argue that it was "hate speech" that harmed him or her. So is that free speech? Or is free speech only speech that couldn't possible offend anyone?
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Speech can only harm a person if it is credible. (E.g., I start a credible rumor about you, your reputation is damaged.) Anonymous speech is not credible.
I mostly agree, but the anonymity aspect isn't quite right
let me give examples:
Back in the '70s when I was in High school we had bomb threats sent in by telepone. Never real, but we had to evacuate the building every time. They caught the kid doing it eventually after several weeks. I don't think he had much of a free speech defense, but he was sending anonymously.
Let's take a Yik-Yak case. A Penn State student using Yik-Yak posted a threat to shoot up the campus. He was caught by another student who
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt it.
Most of them are just trolls. You know, bored assholes who've learned exactly which buttons to press to get the most reaction out of society.
That being said, the root of the problem is the same; political correctness is fundamentally just a way to tell the trolls which buttons are the best.
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Kinda, except for the political correctness dig.
I don't object to references to raping my daughter and leaving her in a bloody pile in a ditch because it's politically incorrect.
And Shepherds WE shall be... (Score:2)
i think that youngins that make such comments should be given instructions on why this is not what a young man should be doing before somebody decides to get "his Brother" and finish said prayer.
It all boils down to what Judge does a person want to have??
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Death/mass violence threats are not a political correctness issue. They are a criminal issue. That kind of trolling is not pushing people's buttons, it's causing the university to expend significant resources protecting people, harming their business as people leave or are unable to study, causing people harm through stress. It's way beyond just being a dick, it's being a criminal.
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The effect is to create something like this - an anonymous way for people to let out the aggressions and hatreds that they already had, and are just afraid to announce due to the attempted control of speech in any public, identifiable arena.
Unlike with air as the medium for acoustic waves, in this case, ignoring the communication is simple: just don't install that nonsense.
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That would be great if we lived in a world where people don't actually commit rape. Meanwhile, in the real world, it's actually disturbingly common. Just because you see someone proposing a gang rape behind a veil of anonymity doesn't mean that they were just joking. It's eminently possible that they were 100% serious.
Anyway, while this is portrayed as something that universities physically can't do anything about without going to court, there's actually a number of things they could do, from a technical st
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh hey, who'daguessed it, apparently the protocol is super-weak [github.com].
Re:Baking political correctness in society (Score:4, Interesting)
It's much easier than that. Just call the cops. Cops get a subpoena, Yik Yak coughs up the details of the poster. The idiot who posts a threat on this kind of service is easier to find than someone who called one in from a pay phone or slipped a note under the admin building door.
The article seems to be conflating actual threats and random idiot posts to try and claim that this thing is dangerous. It "creates a destructive environment." Personally, having YouTube and Slashdot -1 comments streamed direct to my phone sounds horrible, but I guess some people get off on that. If you don't, don't use the app.
I already know I'm old but (Score:4, Funny)
I know I'm already old in the eyes of hip young college students, but am I the only one who's never heard of Yik Yak? It sounds like what happens after you eat cheap chinese food on campus.
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New apps come out all the time, and have the staying power of a fart in a hurricane.
Something else will come along to put yik yak out to pasture.
Can you Yak a fire in the Campus theater? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not all speech is protected.
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And am *I* the one who gets to decide what is and isn't? Or you?
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The first vote I propose is a law saying that any disparagement of Jesus is illegal speech.
77% of Americans are Christian. So let's put it to a vote and see democracy in action.
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Not all speech is protected.
Actually it is; it's the consequences of the speech that get you in trouble.
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Yes. It is. It amazes me that people still cite Holmes's "fire in a crowded theater" bullshit from Schenck v. United States [wikipedia.org], where the SCOTUS trampled over Amendment I to criminalize an anti-draft protest.
If you shout "fire" in a theater when there is in fact a fire, you could be a hero. If you're on stage as part of the performance and fire is part of the plot of the play, you can shout "fire!". If shouting "fire" in a theater causes people to get trampled, the fault is on the
I think it's awesome. (Score:4, Interesting)
I just downloaded the app. It lets you listen in on various different college campuses in case your area is boring (it is). I did a brief, extremely unscientific survey of a few colleges, and I didn't see anything specifically racist, homophobic or whatever. What I saw was college kids being college kids.
Sure you're going to see a little bit of everything because there's a little bit of everything in society. I didn't see anything too bad, but I'm sure it's there. Political correctness and people trying to censor stuff like this are the problem. This is no different than a local (physical) bulletin board.
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Hateful speech must be protected first (Score:3)
Now, where is the daylight savings time article?
So, don't download it (Score:5, Informative)
I downloaded Yik Yak and used it for about a week. I saw what was going on there.
If you are disturbed by what you see on there, delete the app. Let those idiots spew toxic shit at each other, and you can go on unaware of their ramblings.
Eventually, Yik Yak will die off, and the "problem" is solved.
Or, do you somehow think we can pass some law that will change human nature?
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This.
It's the goddam Internet.
Get over it.
I started using the Internet when Moby Dick was a minnow and trolls have become, for me, simply "noise," that I step around just like I used to step around bullshit in an otherwise pleasant meadow.
Don't like bullshit?
Stay on the sidewalk.
False premise... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
This.
Yik Yak is going to hell anyway when it zeros in on a business model.
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Not saying c
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Sorry for that, lady.
This is beyond asinine. (Score:2)
What in the nine hells is this whining? It's a god damn app on a cell phone!
You want to "prevent the havoc"? Turn the damn app off! The world doesn't owe your delicate sensibilities a damn thing, and not every app must censor that which you may not want to hear.
Is this some kind of joke? Is it an Onion piece? Is it one of those far-far-far-left progressive campaigns again, where everything must be acceptable to everyone, or be literally Hitler and threatened off campus? I cannot make any sense of the accusa
Think of it as? (Score:2)
? whaaaa (Score:2)
Colleges are largely powerless to deal with the havoc Yik Yak is wreaking.
Huh? A piece of software is wreaking havoc? Wouldn't it be the sociopathic children that attend the school that are creating the havoc?
Re: (Score:2)
Software doesn't troll People, People troll People.
Junk App (Score:4, Informative)
That 1.5 mile radius is incredibly limiting - if you start a conversation at home you can't participate in it once you get to work. The anonymous comments are filled with so much bitching and whining of spoiled brats it really makes me resent the student body at my local university. There's a huge amount of group-think that's baked into the app itself - say something unpopular and earn just a few downvotes and Yik Yak will delete your comment forever. That's when it's not losing your comments to begin with: that crappy service lost nearly 20% of my comments, but continued to alert me for updates to conversations that have completely disappeared.
TL;DR - Yik Yak is a gimmick and a poorly made one at that.
Randomness (Score:5, Interesting)
The trouble with Yik Yak is that you're hostage to other people's whims, and this app seems to attract people that prefer negativity. I tried a little experiment -- I posted one "funny" comment, one positive comment, and one negative comment. Both the funny and positive comments were quickly down-voted to -5 and removed, whereas the negative comment was up-voted and quickly became the most popular yak in my area. Most of the other top-rated yaks are people moaning about the town, the people, the night life, etc. Usually by the time you see a nice / positive yak it's already at -3 or -4 and when you refresh the list it's gone. I deleted the app.
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I'm going to go see if Yik Yak has an API that I can use. Then I'll run sentiment analysis on every post and chart it against its vote score. Then I can finally prove once and for all that everybody is an asshole (at least on one arbitrary social media site).
I love these! (Score:5, Insightful)
They just prove that human being in general when they can hide who they are, turn into horrible monsters.
History repeats, yet nobody learns.
Business Model (Score:2)
1. Create app that is old wine in a new model
2. Get college kids to use it and possibly say some things others may find offensive or stupid; i.e. get them to act like college kids
3. Get NYT to write article
4. Profit
BS and more BS (Score:2)
"But Yik Yak's particular design can produce especially harmful consequences"
The consequence that you only thought that "rude" "offensive" "racicist" "*-phobic" people who posted anonymously on the internet only lived far, far away?
It really is amazing how weak and thin skinned people today are. Is the nursery school play ground change "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me" today replaced by "but name will kill me!" ???
Here's a novel idea... (Score:2)
remove bad YY posts with downvotes (Score:2)
as usual (Score:3)
As usual, academia's response when confronted by the ultimate result of their own mores: reflexively play jackbooted fascists. "How can we stop this? How can we control this?"
Free speech is free for everyone, including assholes. That is ALSO including racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. You don't get to define what speech is free.
Look, I personally DON'T believe in unfettered free speech. However, I'm sincerely amused by watching the Academic Left that has stridently insisted for 50 years that pretty much *everything* must be allowed, deeply discomforted when confronted by (human) nature, red in tooth and claw.
Anonymous speech *is* the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Not in general mind you, but most people who have their name/reputation tied to what they say to others are rarely* inflammatory, belligerent, or insulting because it has social consequences for the speaker. But anonymous speech, where it has no consequences for you and only consequences for a target, is specifically the case where people become assholes.
Now, they may have been assholes all their lives, but anonymous services empower them. Are you really in favor of empowering assholes?
*since many on /. seem so to be pissed all the time, I mean "rarely" in the sense of the number of mean spirited comments compared to all comments made in the world, not the number of mean spirited comments *you* come up with among your friends or when you're pissed at someone/something.
Re:Anonymous speech *is* the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Anonymity doesn't just empower assholes. It also empowers whistleblowers, people who are afraid to be honest about the powerful because they're weak, people whose ideas may be controversial but still need to be heard, etc.
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It doesn't have to be something as dire as whistle blowers.
People who are not trolls may want to be anonymous for reasons, by way of example but not by way of limitation:
1.) There are relatives in the hood
2.) Employees/employers may be in the hood
3.) People want to put information out there and aren't really interested in a dialog
4.) Other.
Look:
Religious freedom may help us understand written trolling:
Westboro Baptist church [godhatesfags.com] is about as offensive as a pseudo-Christian organization can get and they are not a
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In general, yes - as I stated in the first five words of my post.
To the topic of discussion, though, Yik Yak is not a platform for whistleblowers. And there are far more borderline assholes who are unleashed on Yik Yak than there are whistleblowers who would change the world or amend great wrongs with a platform like Yik Yak.
Not that Yik Yak is bad, or should necessarily be eliminated - but the right to unlimited assholeness is not guaranteed when it targets someone. Your freedom to yell "gang bang" does no
Re:Anonymous speech *is* the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Anonymity is not the problem. And it doesn't empower assholes. For such people, it allows them to vent their issues and opinions. The alternative is to let them fester and feed on itself till either the usual destruction of the individual or the rare out lash against society through murder or bombing or joining slightly like minded individuals. Individuals who grow in strength with their numbers and common causes and lash out against [from their view point] an oppressive society.
Anonymity actually empowers society to see the underlying issues within when they are small and addressable (Slashdot Beta anyone). The alternative is to go about our lives as if everything is perfect cause everything has conformed to be just like everyone else. Eventually the hidden issues get too large to be ignored or addressed and we end up paying for it. At the same time we learn very little cause we erased all the signs and are unable to prevent them in the future.
We shouldn't throw away anonymity just cause the messages we see ruin our picture of a perfect society or hurt our feelings. We should address the problems rather than shoot the messenger.
Re:Anonymous speech *is* the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
" it allows them to vent their issues and opinions. "
You say "allow" I say "empower." Same concept.
I'm under no illusion that we can fix society, because it's full of fucked up people who are essentially raised to be mean, bigoted assholes by their parents (who are generally mean, bigoted assholes).
Allowing the borderline assholes to explore these tendencies and gain confidence in their ability to emotionally torture others will not fix them. Allowing full-on assholes to do the same is no better.
"Anonymity actually empowers society to see the underlying issues within when they are small and addressable"
I would disagree. Society is not a user interface on a computer database; not even close. And simply showing that there are assholes among us is no closer to a solution. We know they're there. All this does is reinforce their belief that being an asshole is perfectly acceptable, because there are no consequences for doing so.
If you went to class every day and called your professor an ugly cunt that should be beaten every day, how would that affect your relationship with that professor? If you said your professor was a dick and should have someone sodomize him with a baseball bat during the Q&A portion of a lecture, would that help or hurt your grade in the class? What if you could do it anonymously? Which of those two cases would produce a better societal outcome for you, personally? Which one would produce a better outcome for the class as a whole?
The anonymous platform does not benefit society in these cases, only the speaker. Most of Yik Yak is innocuous. The subset we're talking about is, imho, abusive.
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Wrong.
If people have something worthwhile to say, what does it matter to the recipients if the author is anonymous or not?
Re:Anonymous speech *is* the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes because history had proven that there was never any blowback from saying women should have the right to vote or that blacks and other minorities deserve the same rights and abilities in society that whites and everyone else enjoys.
Yep, you should think twice before publically participating in political speech else that donation to the group wanting to define marriage between a man and a woman will stop you from having a job at some places.
You are 100% corect think hard before you speak.
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Re:Public Service Announcement (Score:4, Funny)
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It's sad that in this era when we need it most, the movie "PCU" [imdb.com] isn't available for streaming. It should be projected into every dorm room.
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Awesome troll, you managed to get a slippery slope, reductio ad hitleram, a reference to terrorism, and an appeal to emotion all in three short paragraphs..
Bingo!
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