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After coming to an ignominious end in 2017, the once popular anonymous gossip app with college students is coming back to life. Yik Yak returned to the iOS App Store (sorry Android users) on Monday under a new owner, sparking new interest in the long-dead social network.
With a reputation for rampant cyberbullying and harassment, moderation issues were at the heart of the app’s failure. Once ubiquitous on many college campuses, Yik Yak limped in 2016, laying off most employees and struggling to keep users engaged. That same year, the app attempted to move away from campus gossip and turn to location-based social media, but that wasn’t enough and the once-high-profile social media was sold to the scrap.
While co-founders Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington terminated the app in 2017, Square paid $ 1 million for several Yik Yak engineers and rights to some of the company’s intellectual property. The company had raised $ 73 million and was valued at around $ 400 million in 2014, at its peak. TechCrunch has contacted the company for information on its new property, which is apparently based in Nashville, but has yet to receive a response.
While we still don’t know who relaunched it, the new version of Yik Yak is well aware of the pitfalls of the original app. After providing a phone number to register, a short onboarding sequence alerts users to a zero-tolerance “one-shot and you’re away” policy for harassment and threats.
“We are committed to fighting bullying and hate speech on the Yik Yak platform by all means necessary,” wrote the new Yik Yak team, which acquired the rights to develop the app in February. , on a relaunched website.
Being aware of the problems that will inevitably arise on a social network and being prepared to moderate those problems on a large scale are two very different propositions. Yik Yak is anonymous, but it’s also an app focused on what’s happening IRL nearby within a tight radius, two factors that could combine to pose even more of a moderation challenge.
In the new app, a sidebar directs users to the address of ‘stay safe’ resources and an array of issues that could arise on the app, such as carpooling, bullying, sexual consent, and COVID-19 , although the app does not yet include explicit disinformation policies.
Another section in the sidebar offers a list of mental health resources and encourages users to vote against and report any harassment on the app so that it can be reviewed by the Yik Yak team. The company says yaks with a negative rating of five or more negative votes will automatically be removed from the app’s feed, though we’ve asked the company for more details on its content moderation plans, including whether a team of Yik Yak is dedicated to the task.
The new Yik Yak is built around location-based sharing and users can share messages, called “yaks,” to anyone within a five mile radius. If you are in a rural area or a quiet area devoid of yaks, you can have fun with the denominations that appear on a board of popular national publications.
So far, there are plenty of high-profile posts discussing enthusiastically the return of the app from former Yik Yak devotees – mostly millennials who have since graduated from college. A handful of popular posts warn that Gen Z too young to use Yik Yak in their prime won’t know what hit them.
“Is this app now 100% for 25-30 year olds?” A post reads. “The Zoomers are not ready for the return of the Yak,” wrote another user.
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