Maybe we should expect stupid behavior in response to apps with stupid names?
Tim Cushing writes:
Universities are still freaking out over the fact that some of their students are racists and assholes. But rather than deal with the inevitability that any decent-sized grouping of people will contain a percentage of both, they’ve opted to shoot the messenger: Yik Yak. Yik Yak provides a platform for anonymous postings that can only be seen by others within the same general location (1.5-10 miles). It also provides a voting system. With enough downvotes, a post is removed.
Despite these key ingredients, students and administrators are finding the app is to blame, rather than a portion of the people using it. So, they do ridiculous things like call for a ban of the app on campus — something almost completely unenforceable and ultimately futile.
In some cases, they opt for other unenforceable and futile efforts. The University of Rochester (NY) has discovered that local posts on Yik Yak contain a number of unsavory statements, including possible threats towards a student and racially-motivated activity. This has prompted a completely ridiculous response from the university’s legal team, which has “demanded” that Yik Yak do a number of things, including turn over a ton of information on users of the service.
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