I love checking this app and engaging with my fellow people on campus, but the app really needs to update its notification tab to show more of a preview of what Yak it’s referring to. The notification of “someone else commented on a yak you commented on” is helpful, and I want to check in on the thread, I love that. But, it doesn’t tell me which Yak that is. I have to tap that notification, wait 10 seconds for the Yak to load and then I end up checking the responses on that entire Yak. Right after that, you turn around and go back to the notification tab, and the indicator light for the notification you left is still on. You might be thinking, “Oh, just refresh it!”. Nope, if you do that, it gets rid of all the indicator lights for new notifications. So now, you have to guess what the next notification you should check is with no help from the exactly the same notification descriptions. I would suggest having a feature that changes the notifications from individual updates on each new message in the thread, to instead being one that says “New comments on Yak, ‘XYZ’” standing for the first couple words of that Yak. This way, it’s labeled and it’s streamlined because in the old system, I was getting all the updated messages in a Yak from just clicking on the first notification but then I still had to wade through all the other notifications about the same Yak.

I’ve never left a review on an app before, so this will be my first. I first got this app in high school because I had a really large school and thought it would be fun. This was when you could still interact with your local community rather than just college communities. Removing that feature was the start of this app’s downfall. It was funny to see everyone talking about teachers and what was going on around town. At some point I got a timeout for whatever reason. I never made rude comments on there or anything, so someone had to of reported one of my comments or something that caused the timeout. I didn’t understand and it never let me post anything else again, so I just deleted the app. I just re-installed it today because I’m in college now, and I wanted to join and post on the community. I joined the community and scrolled through a few comments. I then wrote up a post about our fall break that just started today. I tried to post it….and it told me I was in a timeout. A TIMEOUT FOR OVER 2 YEARS????? What sense does that make?! This app seriously downgraded, and it doesn’t seem like there will be any effort made to return it to its glory days. Unless you’re in college it’s a pointless app, and if you want to join a college community that actually functions normally just use Snapchat. I really, really, REALLY despise this company for ruining such a good app. Deleting it for the second time now and never downloading again.

The reason I enjoyed YikYak was the unique proximity-based design. The charm of yikyak was that you were seeing anonymous posts from people NEARBY you. You could see the thoughts and opinions of people in your area while remaining anonymous; it was something that was really uniting and somewhat highlighted the humanity of people posting behind the screen while keeping up a sense of mystery. The sense of community was unique and interesting, a refreshing take on social media that centered on your local area rather than the far-reaching connected internet-based communities ALL OTHER apps have. Getting rid of the one incredibly unique feature of yikyak was a huge mistake. I understand that the new developers needed to merge yikyak with a different platform, but I think there’s a way to do this while still preserving the proximity-based text posting. If this was a true merge, I’d expect the foundational proximity feature to be supported in ADDITION to new features. Bring back the local posting!! Bring back the “distance from you” information on posts! Bring back the ONLY FEATURE that made yikyak something special! This new update just makes yikyak a worse version of reddit. There will soon be no competition with reddit unless the developers make SERIOUS changes to yikyak. I hope these critiques from the users will influence change, or else I am positive that many people will soon delete the app. It would be such a shame to see such a unique app die! Hoping for the best.

I liked this app years ago when I first got it. But now they will ban posts simply for being reported, regardless of if what you did ACTUALLY violates guidelines. I had so many posts removed that did not mention the names, nicknames, or initials of anyone. They were removed because they implied the mention of a person, completely keeping the person's identity a secret. I wish it would tell you what part of your post violated guidelines, because I truly do not know what about my posts violated them, thus I couldn't avoid making that mistake again. This happened so many times I was indefinitely suspended. Can't even figure out why, because none of your posts are reviewed by actual people. They are reviewed by an AI, that essentially removes any posts that are reported at all, regardless of if they actually violate the guideline they are reported for. You can basically just get any posts that you don't like removed if you report them, regardless of what the posts say at all. It wasn't always like this, but this new model has resulted in so many loyal users being banned indefinitely. Wouldn't even let me log out after I was banned, but wanted me to stay in my communities and continue using the app. Why would I use this app if I can't post, comment, or DM anyone. It's essentially just a worse version of reddit.