Anonymous social networking apps are in reporting mode. Yes, again. This week, University of North Carolina (UNC) System President Peter Hans announced a plan to block the use of popular anonymous social apps on campus, including Yik Yak, Whistle, Whisper and Side chat. The ban will affect the 16 universitiessuch as UNC Chapel Hill, NCSU, UNC Charlotte and others, as well as a public residential high school that includes the UNC system.
In remarks communicated in a letter with the UNC Board of Governors, Hans explains the reason for the ban, noting that these small, hyper-local platforms have “demonstrated a reckless disregard for the well-being of young people and a complete indifference to bullying and misbehavior.”
The apps also turn a blind eye to other problems, such as sexual harassment, racial slurs and drug trafficking, he noted.
If you’re not familiar with these apps, you’re probably not the target demographic.
Anonymous social apps tend to target younger users and are often used for bad behavior such as bullying, harassment and online abuse. Or as Hans colorfully puts it, apps are “the modern equivalent of scrawling hard rumors on the bathroom wall, except now with a much larger audience.”
Many of the modern versions of the anonymous social group also narrowly target young people by operating within a five-mile radius of a college or university campus. This leads to high adoption among students but, due to their use case, they are often overlooked by college administrators. Hans, for example, admitted that he had never heard of any of these applications until a group of research body presidents brought them to his attention.
The anonymous social trend is, unfortunately, not new. It seems like every few years — and no matter how many times anonymous apps like these fail — someone, somewhere, creates another anonymous social platform. It’s the category of social media cockroaches.
Yik Yik, in fact, is on its second life. The original version blocked access to US middle and high school students amid bullying and threats of violence in 2014, then shut down for good in 2017 as its co-founders headed to Square (now Block) in an acqui-hire style acquisition. But in 2021, the app has resurfaced — or at least, one with the same name and branding, but under new ownership. (See what I mean about cockroaches?)
No matter how many times this trend is tried, stand-alone anonymous consumer-facing social media applications rarely lead to a sustainable business. The cost of becoming home to so much toxic content ultimately hits them, whether it’s through consumer backlash for their failure to address cyberbullying (RIP Secret), app store bans (RIP Sarahah), deplatforming, and lawsuits ( RIP Snap’s anonymous social developer partners), regulation (RIP Ask.fm), or, as in the case of the previous version of YikYak, numerous campus-wide bans affecting its target market.
With UNC’s move to ban apps from running on its network, the beginning of the end for this current set of apps may be near. Already, there have been turf wars and consolidation among this group—Sidechat quietly acquired Yik Yak last year, for example. Now, these apps are on the radar of those with the ability to hurt their adoption and usage.
While UNC’s ban doesn’t mean university students won’t be able to access these apps — they could still use those apps through their cell phone plan or other Wi-Fi networks — it’s at least an effort to move away students from these platforms and the risky behaviors they inspire.
“I hope this action, admittedly a small step, will provoke deeper reflection on how we encourage our students to spend their time, engage with their peers, and cultivate a public square worthy of a public university,” he wrote Hans. .
The UNC System president said he was inspired to take action after hearing a public lecture by NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who pointed out that our current relationship with technology and online life is a choice, and we can make different choices.
“We prescribed opium to children, [Haidt] noted, and we stopped when it became clear that we were doing terrible damage,” Hans said. I think we are approaching a similar moment of clarity regarding the digital drugs that have been freely given to them for the last fifteen years,” he added.
Yik Yak, Sidechat, Whisper and Fizz were invited to comment using public email addresses published on their websites and terms of service. None of the companies responded and some of their published emails are down, even though the apps are up and running. Attempts to contact Fizz through a previous PR representative were also unsuccessful. Sidechat quietly acquired Yik Yak in 2023.
Apps today have a small base among younger users. According to data from the app intelligence company AppFigures, Yik Yak is the biggest of the bunch, with more than 3.5 million iOS installs as of 2021, almost entirely in the US. Sidechat has approximately 334,700 iOS installations (92.8% are in the US). Whisper has 761,044 Android installs (and 4.2 million as of 2017). and Fizz has 583,318 iOS installs.
Some of the applications have caught the attention of universities in the past. In addition to the original Yik Yak, Harvard contacted Sidechat in January over student reports of anti-Semitic posts on its platform, calling on the company to do more to moderate its content. Florida State University also included Fizz in its 2023 ban to apps that threatened personal privacy and national security, along with TikTok, WeChat and others as did Florida A&M.
The four anonymous social networking apps Hans mentioned have not yet been banned from UNC campuses. However, Hans asked the legal and IT teams to develop a plan to block the applications from the UNC System infrastructure. He did not share a timeline for when the blocks would be installed.
Sarah Perez can be reached at sarahp@techcrunch.com or @sarahperez.01 / 415.234.3994 on Signal.
