Groups warn against Yik Yak for anonymous harassment

Yik Yak is facing non-anonymous criticism from women’s and civil rights groups for harassing, threatening content featured on the app.

More than 70 groups, including the Human Rights Campaign and the Feminist Majority Foundation, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education encouraging administrators to protect students from vicious posts on anonymous social media sites. According to the letter, anonymous social media sites are often used to engage in discriminatory behavior and are popular on college campuses.

“Social media has become a victim of its own success,” said Debashis Aikat, an associate professor in the UNC School of Media and Journalism. “On some days, it does more harm than good.”

On Tuesday, UNC received a threat through Yik Yak, one of the anonymous sites the letter mentioned. The post mirrored a bomb threat UNC received last year through Yik Yak.

The anonymity these apps give users can prompt them to misuse the medium and create vicious content at the expense of others, and college students are prime patrons, Aikat said.

“College students are the right audience for social media,” he said. “They have devices that enable this communication and they are constantly connected.”

But first-year and Yik Yak-user Eugenie Chen said social media helps her stay informed.

“I probably go on social media now more than I did in high school,” she said. “It’s almost an equivalent to a newspaper, but for college.”

Chen said she uses Yik Yak for entertainment, and it helps her stay involved on a large campus.

“The high school I went to was small, and everyone was sort of able to get up to date based off of what other people were saying,” she said. “But college is just so massive that you need something that connects everyone.”

While the desire to stay connected is nothing new, anonymity raises concerns when posts become hateful and their online nature increases ambiguity, Aikat said.

“This is creating a little bit of a chaotic situation. You do not know who to believe, who to not believe,” he said.

Kyle Asher, a first-year and Yik Yak-user, said it is the responsibility of app users to determine whether a post is credible through the up/down-voting feature on the app.

“As long as there is anonymity, the Yik Yak community as a whole will discern what content is appropriate,” he said.

He said he believes the power to decide what is offensive should be left to the student population.

“For the Chapel Hill community, I think the students have the right and possess the ability to decide what content is appropriate,” Asher said.

For now, Aikat encourages students and faculty to practice safe computing, be alert and exercise caution when using anonymous applications.

“This is a world where we have to pay attention to every message,” Aikat said.

@kentomcdonald

state@dailytarheel.com