Yik Yak is a supposedly anonymous social media application used by primarily college students to post short commentaries, often taking the form of jokes or gripes about the school. One of the reason the app is so popular is the complete anonymity it offers. Each post is completely disconnected from any identifying username. Yet, a careful reading of the privacy policy reveals the app retains the right to hand over information to law enforcement. Just such a disclosure has been used to identify the person behind the threats on the lives of black students at University of Missouri. I hope we get a chance to talk about the involvement of social media in the protests in class.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/11/yik-yak-anonymous-users-can-be-arrested-university-of-missouri
We had also talked about this in one of my other classes - It is concerning when a social media platform is used like this, especially because of the power of anonymity; though, YikYaks can only be posted by people within a certain radius. Is it confusing to anyone that the two students arrested for terrorist threats against black students were arrested hundreds of miles away from Mizzou? They were arrested on other UM campuses. Is this a case of me not understanding the technology or of the police not understanding it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, we can talk about how social movements have used social media in relation to the way that backlash uses social media and this scary escalation to a threat of mass violence.