TRIGGER WARNING: This post discusses and shows images of suicide threats on social media. Please proceed with caution.
You may be familiar with Yik Yak if you’re attending most colleges in the country. Yik Yak is an anonymous sharing site that is location based and most commonly used by college students. The posts are about a whole range of things- studying, tests, campus WiFi or eateries, partying, drugs and sex. People also post about being lonely or confused or, in some cases, about plans to commit suicide.
Yik Yak is set up where you can set your Herd to be a certain campus area but you can browse your local “yaks” no matter where you are. Yakkers can post to their local feed or to their Herd even if they are outside of the 1.5-mile Herd radius. College students often post to their Herd over the summer, complaining about how boring their local feed is back in their hometown.
I check Yik Yak when I have some free time just to see what is going on in my Herd. I am both a staff member at my college as well as a part-time student. I like Yik Yak because it makes me feel more connected to the traditional students that I see on campus every day. I learn about fire alarms going off in the residence halls, local and current events. During finals week on my campus, I came across a post from someone threatening to commit suicide (see below).
Yik Yak gives some power to the people by allowing Yakkers to up-vote or down-vote posts. When you do any action on Yik Yak, you are rewarded Yakarma. If a post is downvoted 5 times, it disappears from the feed. Posts about suicide are not well-liked. It is a tricky situation that you put yourself in- do you up-vote the post? If you do, does that make it seem like you’re supporting this poster’s decision? If you downvote the post and it goes away, how can you keep tabs on the original poster to make sure s/he is okay?
All posts on Yik Yak have a flag in the top right corner to report the post. This measure is often taken for indecent or inappropriate posts and Yik Yak seems to take care of those issues fairly well. On the post I was concerned about, I clicked the flag and was brought to my options. I chose “other” which brought me to “I’m concerned about this user.” The advice from Yik Yak is to call your local law enforcement right away.
My Herd is made up of three colleges. I called Campus Security on two of the three campuses. I announced myself as a staff person, explained my concern and left my name and phone number. I was assured that supervising staff would look into the issue. When the post was down-voted away, I emailed a screenshot of it to my campus security so they could see why I was concerned.
Because Yik Yak is an anonymous site, users are not asked for any personal or contact information upon signing up. Yik Yak tracks date and time of interactions in the app, IP addresses and GPS locations of posts but it is not easily accessible by anyone outside of the organization. Yik Yak’s “Guidelines for Law Enforcement” state that account information could be disclosed to law enforcement without a warrant or subpoena “in response to a valid emergency when we believe that doing so is necessary to prevent death or serious physical harm to someone (for instance, in cases involving kidnapping, bomb threats, school shootings or suicide threats).” I figured contacting campus security would make the most sense due to the nature of Yik Yak relating to higher education and if necessary, campus officials would contact local authorities.
Upon returning to the Yik Yak after calling security, I was comforted to find other Yakkers offering words of encouragement and support to this person who was threatening suicide. When the post was down-voted away, I posted to the Herd information about the Crisis Textline. Yik Yak doesn’t allow anyone to post phone numbers so no matter how many times I attempted to post the Suicide Hotline phone number, it wouldn’t let me. I understand the reason behind not posting people’s phone numbers on Yik Yak due to harassment concerns but I feel there should be a filter or setting that allows Yik Yak to recognize the Suicide Hotline and allow people to post that very important phone number.
I followed up with Campus Security the next day and I was told that the police have had problems obtaining information from YikYak because of how little information is collected from users and because they release user information on a case by case basis. This is a direct quote from the email I received: “Not trying to downplay the issue, but YikYak also rates your Yaks and gives you Yakarma which rates you against other users, the more responses the more points. I bring this up as some people that post try to be controversial just to get the points.” I was also told that since anyone can post to their Herd regardless of geographical location, there was no way to know if this person was physically in the 1.5-mile radius or not. “Unfortunately, we were at a stop and not able to do much with this posting.”
This frustrates me. I understand the difficulty of finding an anonymous person posting to a social media site like this. I understand why Yik Yak is so popular and can be a good thing to give students a place to vent (when the WiFi on campus isn’t working fast enough, when classes are hard, when couples break-up). But I believe there needs to be more roadblocks or safety nets for posts about suicide.
Whisper is an app that allows users to post anonymously using text over pictures. Whisper’s Community Guidelines tell users about posts regarding self-harm or suicide, referencing a non-profit organization that they started to help people who are posting about mental illness. “We treat references to self-harm and eating disorders seriously. Any posts glorifying these issues will be deleted. We invite you to visit Your-Voice.org, our non-profit dedicated to eradicating the stigma around mental health issues.” Whisper has a filter set up that allows it to recognize self-harm posts and creates a pop up with help. One user took a screenshot of that pop-up and posted it to Whisper with a note of their own. The Suicide Hotline number is also provided to this person, something I was unable to post on Yik Yak. This should be the model for any anonymous posting site- there has to be a way to target people posting about suicide immediately, the way I got a notice immediately telling me I couldn’t post a phone number in my Herd.
Yik Yak, and other sites like it, are also a breeding ground for hate speech, offensive language and other threats to people such as terrorist attacks or school shootings. Students on campuses around the country are facing racial discrimination and hate speech and women are facing threats of rape and sexual assault. It seems that Yik Yak is more responsive and releases information more readily when a terrorist threat is made on the app. People have been tracked down and arrested for threats made on Yik Yak to shoot up a school. Students at the University of Missouri and University of Central Oklahoma have been arrested for making such threats to public safety. The way I see it, only helping the lives of many are taking precedent over the life of one person who needs help. I understand why this is but I also believe if GPS location and IP addresses of a person who posts about shooting up a school can be released quickly to police, shouldn’t the same be done for a post threatening suicide? Even if the threat ends up being untrue, it is likely that person could use some help or at least know someone is looking out for them in a time of need.
In the end, I think the original poster ended up fine. See below for the Yak I posted about the Crisis Textline and the responses and encouragement after that (my username is missmarvel10). I have no way of knowing if "gray pawprint" (without usernames, Yakkers refer to each other by the icon that shows up with their post) was the original poster but I'd like to think s/he is still alive and doing okay today. What I do know is that serious changes need to be made in the way Yik Yak, college campuses and local police deal with situations like this across the country as it is a problem that will continue to surface.
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts or contemplating self-harm, please seek help! The Suicide Prevention Hotline phone number is 1-800-273-8255 or you can text "START" to 741-741 to be connected anonymously with someone at the Crisis Textline.
