Yik Yak from a Cascading Graph Perspective
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/10/yik-yak-has-been-delisted-on-google-play-since-october/
Recently, I find myself opening the popular social app “Yik Yak” less and less. In addition, when I do open the app, posts are less frequent and the number of votes on the most popular posts in the Cornell University/Ithaca area are significantly lower than they were my freshman year. I decided to look into this trend via techcrunch.com.
Allegedly, colleges across the country have banned Yik Yak from their campuses because of the negativity, threats, and bias of various varieties that resulted from the anonymous nature of the app. This wasn’t that surprising. However, on a slightly more shocking level, Google has delisted on Google Play since October 2014. Now, “delisted” does not mean “removed,” but the nature of Yik Yak’s status on the store indicates that Google had something to do with the change in discovery. Yik Yak is still discoverable via search, and it wouldn’t be if the app’s creators delisted it themselves. Google’s involvement is probably due to the app violating Google’s “Developer Program Policies” involving content that is biased in any form towards various groups.
Outside of Yik Yak’s status online, the app has been the center of various incidents across the country at several universities. Schools such as Eastern Michigan, Utica College in New York, Norwich University, etc. have banned the app formally on their campuses. Other universities like UNC, Towson, Penn State, etc. have experienced mass violence threats that have captured media attention. This has cast an app that essentially serves as a localized forum in a very negative light.
The article cited above was posted in March of 2015. It seems that trends involving the downfall of Yik Yak are being realized, based upon my personal observations and various app store trends. In general, this app’s movement in and possibly out of societal use can be thought of in terms of the cascading effects on graphs we have studied. Much like conversation to a product or thing can cause a cascade dependent on a threshold, movement away from it can also cause a cascade. Whether people are moving away from Yik Yak entirely or towards newer apps/platforms of a similar nature (e.g. WhatsGoodly/things I haven’t heard of yet), Yik Yak appears to be on the decline. In addition, Yik Yak’s platform may be on the decline because of its somewhat fragile nature. Yik Yak is, essentially, a forum that depends on the local area for data. Obviously, software challenges arise when dealing with extremely large amounts of users, but its platform is something that isn’t entirely amazing. As a result, a substantial reason to use the app is due to direct-benefit reasoning. When dealing with a platform that is entirely based on other users, there is little information-based decision-making that goes into the choice of using the app. Outside of looking at the cute yak logo or fancy refresh animations, I have little reason to be on Yik Yak if there’s no data from other users. To expand upon this idea further, in terms of direct-benefit, if the data from users becomes offensive, my decision to STOP using the app could be due to the fact that me being on the app is causing me detriment.
It will be interesting to see where Yik Yak goes in the near future, and what its developers will do to make the platform more interesting, safe, and appealing to prevent it from completely phasing out of the community.