Yik Yak app on smartphone (image from Huffingtonpost.com)
In response to Adrian Dizon’s post about the trending app Yik Yak, the anonymous social media app Yik Yak indeed has limitless potential in terms of popularity and revenue. I believe that the cornerstone of the application is based on the anonymity of posters, in which lies a moral dilemma. Adrian mentioned immense popularity of the app, and I want to touch on the equally rampant inappropriate use of the app, which has ranged from cyber bullying to bomb threats. I heard about Yik Yak through these news stories, and immediately wrote it off as a bad app. However, upon reading the Huffington Post article about Yik Yak’s active effort to limit this misuse, like Adrian, I have become an advocate for the truly fun app. Co-founders Brooks Buffington and Tyler Droll contacted Apple and changed the age rating to 17+, and began manually inserting “geo-fences” around all middle and high schools in the US, disabling users to post or see messages while on school grounds. The target audience is college age students that can use the app responsibly, and the creators’ attempt to ensure this proper use shows that the makers actually care about more than topping the app store download charts.
The article used in this post can be found at:
http://blogs.ubc.ca/adriandizon/2014/11/04/yik-yak-the-next-big-thing/
Photo can be found at:
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1665880/thumbs/o-YIK-YAK-facebook.jpg
