Yik Yak, the app we all sorta forgot about, is back after a 4-year hiatus

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

Remember Yik Yak, that social media app that gained insane popularity in the mid-2010s as a platform where you could anonymously post messages to people in your area? Well, the app has made a comeback, and for the first time in four years, you can get the app on the app store.

The company announced its comeback on Twitter earlier today, about a week after changing its profile picture on Facebook. In February, the app was purchased from Square by a new company, unironically called Yik Yak, Inc., and the new company quickly took over the app’s development.

The basis of Yik Yak is its anonymity. Users can post on the platform about anything that they want, and users in their general location can see the posts. Posts can be upvoted and downvoted based on popularity. Only users within a 1.5 to 5-mile radius can read users’ posts, making Yik Yak an interesting platform that focuses on what’s going on in your town.

https://twitter.com/YikYakApp/status/1427310464585900035

Yik Yak gained massive popularity in the mid-2010s among teenagers and college students. You could hop on and complain about your school’s sports teams or talk about local upcoming events. But, of course, with the platform’s anonymity came prime cyberbullying and abuse opportunities.

The app ultimately shut down in 2017, after engagement fell off and more complaints of cyberbullying arrived. However, the company has updated the app’s terms of use with a one-strike no-bullying policy that could see users banned immediately for various bullying tactics.

I was in college during Yik Yak’s prime. Though I never spent much time with the app personally, I remember the kind of stuff that you would see posted on it, and some of it was pretty bad. It always seemed like Yik Yak was a harbinger of chaos, and I don’t see this iteration ending any differently. So it looks like we’ll just have to wait and see.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Yelp will now help businesses list if they require proof of vaccination
• Spotify wants to know if free users will pay 99 cents for ads and unlimited skips
• This app uses your webcam to help correct your posture by monitoring if you slouch
• Dark mode isn’t saving your phone’s battery as much as you think – here’s why