The inside story of Yik Yak | Hacker News Reader

The inside story of Yik Yak

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36 pointslxm20 comments

Yik Yak is going to have to fundamentally change to have a future.

It is the most useless app I've downloaded on my phone. Every time I've ever tried to use it I felt like I had completely wasted my time.

There are a lot of users but each new user doesn't bring that much to the experience. In fact, beyond a certain number they just increase the likelyhood that something negative is going to further pollute the community space.

So, not only is it worse that useless, its main metric is actually functioning backward compared to any other social media app.

There are a lot of smart people throwing a lot of money at this thing. I'd love for one of them to explain the reason because I just don't see it.

Edit: I thought of the perfect metaphor just now talking with my friend who'd never heard of Yik Yak and trying to describe it: It is like reading your local bathroom stall. A half a billion dollars worth of stall walls.

I don't get all the negativity towards negativity. It's a common therapy method to shout into a pillow. Support groups for people to shout their frustrations in a supportive space abound. Why is Yik Yak any different?

Sure, it's a cesspool. Sure, it's used for lots of bullying. This makes it no worse than 4chan, and 4chan is absolutely vital to society. A truly anonymous, open forum is necessary for civilization, for the very 'progress' that the people wanting to ban it hold so dear. Without a place for marginalized groups to congregate, even if they're shat on all the while, how will they band together to make their voices heard? Today's villain is tomorrow's saint; I'm not going to say that we've finally got it 'right' yet. Or ever.

"4chan is absolutely vital to society"

Really?

Probably not but it is the birthplace of the modern Internet culture with memes, images, and copypasta that later found mainstream popularity.

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

I installed Yik Yak to see what all the hype was about, and discovered that it was substantially less insightful than 4chan's /b/ board.

That's nothing a bit of reputation based group moderation can't solve. Reddit does it, HN does it. Of course it breaks down if people get another SIM card but otherwise the degenerates could be squashed down pretty quickly.

I actually think the idea as potential. But like all things in life it's about execution.

Reputation-based group moderation results in popular opinions existing and unpopular opinions being crushed out of view. See: Reddit 'hive mind' phenomenon.

Also, if you're talking about users gaining reputation, it doesn't really make a difference in HN/Reddit (I never look at someone's karma), and if you add in a system like StackOverflow's, it becomes an awful grindy treadmill of groupthink.

And that is when group moderation 'works'. It is not clear that it would in YikYak's case.

For both Reddit and HN, people have a bit more stake in their identities than yakkers.

The other problem with user-visible 'reputation' is that it becomes a point of identification. If one user gets a larger amount of points than other users, they become immediately recognizable as 'the guy with 10000 internet points' or 'the guy in the 3200s'.

> That's nothing a bit of reputation based group moderation can't solve. Reddit does it...

...very poorly. Currently the first post is a picture of renowned astrophysicist, Professor Neil Degrasse Tyson. The 2nd top comment, with 1604 points, derides him as 'Black Science Man'. ("it's just a joke", yeah, uh huh.)

Unless you actively take steps to hide it, after pictures of cats, Reddit is a wretched hive of racism worse than Stormfront. What Reddit proves, if anything, that (its implementation of) reputation based group moderation does not work.

@clavelle I have to agree with you

I can't for the life of me see what anyone sees in this app.. then again as a non-teenager/college student, perhaps I'm not their target demographic, and I just don't get it.

>>> then again as a non-teenager/college student.

I usually install it when I'm at sporting events or conferences or at airports (like someone else pointed out) and its quite entertaining.

I went back to my college for homecoming this past Fall and I was amazed and how many and how frequently people were posting - if you wanted to know where a party was, this was the app to have.

Beyond a fleeting entertainment tool, I don't have much use for it either.

As a college student I think the app is stupid. They will need a total change in the future, because at certain points all the app contains is posts that are just copied over from the top list, Reddit, or some other site. There is nothing interesting. Most of the people who use the app just want to be recognized as being funny or edgy, their up vote is what people have bragged to me about.

I've tried it, and I just think it's interesting that you can see what people local to the area are saying on it, have conversations with people who might be someone you see daily. Local events might get commented on. I don't get the large negativity towards the app.

Well, beyond the local area it allows you to "peek" in whatever geographic location you please. Sort of cool but I've found that, unless you're "peeking" at a real cultural-specific location, everyone just sort of says the same stuff.

Yik Yak in any airport during Thanksgiving break is hilarious, hands down. I did delete it though because I got tired of the overzealous moderation.

I would like to know if they offered Elizabeth Long a bunch of money to stop her campaign against them. https://www.change.org/p/tyler-droll-and-brooks-buffington-s... After all it did happen after they received a ridiculous amount of money. Kind of feels like we are in a bubble and may see another color here.

I thought it would be fun to give this a try, but the link only opens a blank screen in the iOS app store. I guess I'll pass on this one.

I'm guessing it's only available in certain countries. It would be nice if they actually told people that, instead of making it fail with no error.

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