Yik Yak serves a good purpose. It brings up those things that can't be said without anonymity. It allows you to push people's buttons in a way that you can't when your name is attached. Maybe you are the person that nobody likes but nobody wants to tell you. Yik Yak can help you out. Maybe all of your peers think you are a slut, but nobody says it to your face. Yik Yak brings it out into the open.
Yik Yak is dangerous and disruptive because we don't know how to deal with such forward criticism. Even more, nothing on Yik Yak is necessarily true (though you wouldn't say it if you didn't think it seemed at least partially correct).
Yik Yak enables forward, hard hitting, juicy criticism (gossip, lies, and simply outrageous nonsense, etc). And while the immediate result is pain, criticism is important on an individual level just as it's important that we can criticize our government.
The damage that Yik Yak causes is the result of us not being able to handle criticism. At the highest level, I welcome the flow of knowledge and hope that it leads us to a better place overall.
But that doesn't mean I'm ignoring the immediate problems. People have likely committed suicide as a result of all the openness. But that's not a problem with the technology, that's a problem with how we approach ruthless criticism. We might be stuck with the technology, but we aren't stuck with the devastation. It's a different type of bullying and criticism that we need to learn how to deal with, and that we need to prepare our children for.
You seem to forget the fact that on the internet anonymity makes us even bigger liars and assholes. Also that these are kids going through puberty and the like, not a tribe of super mellow and "rational" people.
Even beyond that, extremely personal attacks are rarely "constructive criticism". "This guy is super ugly" isn't going to be super helpful on a personal improvement level.
Negative feedback on a personal level also rarely works. This talk was about performance reviews, but it covers the criticisms of people's personality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=1402
Yik Yak is dangerous and disruptive because we don't know how to deal with such forward criticism. Even more, nothing on Yik Yak is necessarily true (though you wouldn't say it if you didn't think it seemed at least partially correct).
Yik Yak enables forward, hard hitting, juicy criticism (gossip, lies, and simply outrageous nonsense, etc). And while the immediate result is pain, criticism is important on an individual level just as it's important that we can criticize our government.
The damage that Yik Yak causes is the result of us not being able to handle criticism. At the highest level, I welcome the flow of knowledge and hope that it leads us to a better place overall.
But that doesn't mean I'm ignoring the immediate problems. People have likely committed suicide as a result of all the openness. But that's not a problem with the technology, that's a problem with how we approach ruthless criticism. We might be stuck with the technology, but we aren't stuck with the devastation. It's a different type of bullying and criticism that we need to learn how to deal with, and that we need to prepare our children for.