One of the biggest criticisms of social media sites and applications is their inherent potential to feed the growing amount of
cyberbullying. Due to the widespread bullying and harassment committed through Yik Yak, many schools and school districts took action to ban the app. These included several
Chicago school districts,
Norwich University in
Vermont,
Eanes Independent School District in
Texas, Lincoln High School district in
Rhode Island,
New Richmond School District in
Ohio, Shawnigan Lake School in Canada and
Pueblo County School District in
Colorado. Tatum High School in
New Mexico banned cell phone use from the school due to Yik Yak, and the Student Government Association at
Emory University in
Georgia attempted to ban the app across campus, but failed to do so after immense backlash from students. Students at
Colgate University staged a three-day protest in September 2014 substantially driven by racist messages on Yik Yak. On May 13, 2015,
Santa Clara University President
Michael Engh released a statement to all students after several racist remarks were posted on Yik Yak. He wrote, “Hate speech, not to be confused with free speech, has no place at Santa Clara University, because it violates the dignity and respect with which each member of our community is entitled to be treated. Hurtful comments directed at individuals or groups diminish us all and create a divisive atmosphere of distrust and suspicion.” On October 3, 2014, The
Huffington Post published an editorial by Ryan Chapin Mach titled "Why Your College Campus Should Ban Yik Yak", which asserted that Yik Yak's anonymous messaging boards "are like bathroom stalls without toilets. They're useless, they're sources of unhelpful or harmful conversations, and they're a complete eyesore." To remedy the cases of bullying in middle and high schools around the country, Droll and Buffington amended the application to include geofences that work in the background. These unseen fences disable the application within their defined borders. At first, these boundaries were installed manually by the developers, but it quickly became clear they would need outside assistance. They found this assistance in a Vermont-based company known as
Maponics. Maponics “builds and defines geographic boundaries.” They happened to already have nearly 85% of the country's high schools mapped, making it easy to block access to Yik Yak in those areas. The fences disabled the app on all middle and high school grounds throughout the country. If the app is opened within one of these areas the user is displayed a message along the lines of: “it looks like you’re trying to use Yik Yak on a middle school or high school grounds. Yik Yak is intended for people college-aged and above. The app is disabled in this area.” The frequency of bullying and harassment that happened on Yik Yak might have been exaggerated by media stories citing specific incidents. Researchers have identified how Yik Yak is mostly used as a positive way to explore racial, ethnic, and sexual identities and to build a sense of community on campus. In December 2014, security researchers discovered and demonstrated a potential attack on the service, where a Yik Yak user could have their account compromised and be deanonymised (having their identity revealed) if an attacker was using the same Wi-Fi network. In March 2015, a student at
Woodward Academy attempted suicide after receiving bullying posts on YikYak. In April 2015, students at
University of Michigan rallied to have YikYak banned after a suicide note was posted. In 2015, Yik Yak gained attention by being the subject of preventing a suicide attempt at the
College of William and Mary. In November 2015 a 19 year old
Washington College student committed suicide because of people talking about him inappropriately on the app. In February 2015, Yik Yak was exposed for systematically downvoting and deleting posts that mention competitors. The automatic system downvoted and deleted any posts that contained words that associated with names of other apps used by university students, including "fade", "unseen", "erodr", and "sneek". The downvoting algorithm, which assigned downvotes on regular intervals until the posts were deleted, appeared to be designed to mislead users to thinking that their posts were unpopular amongst peers, rather than censored by Yik Yak itself. In December 2015,
the SLOG and
The Seattle Times reported that a
Western Washington University student had been
arrested and released on
bail after calling for the
lynching of the
student body president of the university. The racist threats were posted on Yik Yak. In February 2022, after YikYak was revived a student at the
University of Vermont was defamed of assaulting another student. In April 2022, an investigation took place at
Ferris State University where people were told to commit self-harm and to commit suicide. In 2022, a
West Virginia University student threatened suicide after people at the University spread
misinformation about him. The people who spread misinformation were arrested. A year later, a threat for a
school shooting was posted on YikYak also from WVU. In April 2024,
Connecticut College students and faculty raised concerns over an increase in
cyberbullying on Yik Yak. Reports cited anonymous posts containing personal attacks and harassment, prompting discussions about the platform's impact on campus culture. In November 2025,
California State University Northridge released a statement to its students about an image of an assault rifle that was posted to YikYak in an apparent threat towards the university. ==Dissolution of original company==