Yik Yak & free speech: should colleges be allowed to ban the anonymous social media app?

• Author: Tyler, Gabriel
• Position: TECHNOLOGY

Last spring, Jordan Seman sat in a campus dining hall at Middlebury College in Vermont, scrolling through the hot new social media app Yik Yak.

After skimming through a dozen posts, Seman, then a sophomore, noticed one about herself, comparing her to a "hippo. " She knew that the person who wrote it was probably in the same room. But because "yaks" are anonymous, she had no way of telling who was responsible.

"I just felt attacked," says Seman, who fled to her dorm room, where she hid for two days. "I felt like I was being watched."

Created in 2013 by two friends after they graduated from Furman University in South Carolina, Yik Yak has become a huge hit on college campuses nationwide. Unlike Facebook, Yik Yak is completely anonymous, allowing anyone within a 1.5-mile radius to post or view messages without supplying a username, photo, or password. But while most of the chatter is harmless (dating, roommates, classes, what's for lunch), some people have used the app to make racist, sexist, or threatening comments.

In response to complaints, a number of colleges have blocked the app on campus servers, which has elicited objections from free-speech advocates.

"Colleges cannot pick and choose what viewpoints students express," says Esha Bhandari, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.).

The idea behind Yik Yak, according to its founders, was to create a social media network where users didn't need a large number of friends or followers to have their posts widely read, as they do on Facebook and Twitter. Yik Yak invites any anonymous user to "share your thoughts with people around you while keeping your privacy."

"We thought, 'Why can't we level the playing field and connect everyone?"' says Tyler Droll, 24, Yik Yak's co-founder.

Being Invisible

Many students love the app because they can speak their mind without leaving a digital trail. Harry Zieve-Cohen, 22, a senior at Middlebury, says anonymity is especially crucial in college, where students are often uncomfortable discussing sensitive topics like race or gender.

"College culture is so restrictive around speech," says Zieve-Cohen.

But anonymity doesn't always bring out the best in people. Colleges like the University of Texas, Emory University in Atlanta, and others have been dealing with racist, sexist, and otherwise offensive yaks.

Colleges are largely powerless to discipline offenders because Yik Yak's privacy policy doesn't allow it to identify users without a...