The “anonymous” chat app Yik Yak is back

Good news, dear millennials. Yik Yak, the anonymous messaging app once popular with students across the country — is back. About four years after the co-founders of the company announcement shutting down the app, the company’s Twitter account came back to life on Monday to announce the app was back for a new generation of Yakkers.

There are so many questions that we ask ourselves about the recovery, to know why? Why bother to restart an app whose popularity was already on a constant decline when it was first closed in 2017? Why recruit the guy who played Kevin on Office make the announcement? Why put it in a bucket hat ????????

At least for now, these questions remain unanswered. The only detail the company proposed in the official announcement thread is that while the app is currently only available to iPhone users in the US, it will arrive in more countries and devices “as soon as possible”.

For those who missed the Yik Yak mania the first time around, the platform is essentially an open, anonymous bulletin board for anyone within a five mile radius. Ray. After starting the app on my own phone, I found Yakkers Pages and Pages from my own New York neighborhood posting on, well, everything: Cuomo, COVID-19, Ray Ramano, halal food and the nature of Yik Yak himself.

For the most part, this was the kind of fare that populated most of the app when it was in its prime in the mid-2010s. But as you would expect with an anonymous chat app, it also has given its fair share of violent threats and hate speech, culminating at least four students to be arrested for the threats they made on the app. Obviously, these arrests demonstrated that the application was not, In reality, anonymous.

This time around, Yik Yak seems better prepared to deal with these issues. In a long list of community “bodyguard” published on On the company’s website, Yik Yak reminded users that harassment is something that has no place on the platform. “Remember that a person being bullied may feel lonely, depressed or friendless” the company wrote. “Whether at Yik Yak or elsewhere, be an advocate for anyone who is being bullied. Reject hatred! “