Yik Yak, the app that creates anonymous message boards for users within a five mile radius, returns to the US iOS App Store after its 2017 shutdown
Find Your Herd — iPhone Screenshots — YIK YAK IS BACK! Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge : Local and anonymous social media app Yik Yak is back José Adorno / 9to5Mac : Yik Yak for iOS is back after a four-year hiatus Francis Agustin / Insider : The controversial app Yik Yak is officially back, 4 years after shutting down Ivan Mehta / TNW : A brief history of YikYak — the anon platform making its return Charlesarthur / The Overspill : Start Up No.1616: the American failure, GOP scrubs Trump's Afghan deal, Yik Yak returns, Sonos beats Google, ‘Nestflix’, and more Fiza Ali / Neowin : Yik Yak, the anonymous messaging app, returns to iOS after four years Oliver Haslam / iMore : Anonymous chat app Yik Yak is back after four years in the wilderness Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch : Yik Yak returns from the dead Andrew Hutchinson / Social Media Today : YikYak Makes a Comeback, Four Years After Being Shuttered Andi Ortiz / The Wrap : Yik Yak Is Back and Millennials Are Stoked - But Terrified for the Internet Shelby Brown / CNET : Yik Yak, the controversial anonymous social media app, is back Gavin Evans / Complex : Anonymous Chat App ‘Yik Yak’ Relaunches More Than 4 Years After Shutting Down Carlie Porterfield / Forbes : Yik Yak, The Anonymous Local Social Media App, Is Back Emma Roth / MUO : Yik Yak Is Back, With the Anonymous Messaging App Returning to iOS Kris Holt / Engadget : Anonymous chat app Yik Yak is back from the dead Shoshana Wodinsky / Gizmodo : The ‘Anonymous’ Chat App Yik Yak is Back Brett Molina / USA Today : Yik Yak, anonymous messaging app shut down four years ago, is back Tweets: Yik Yak / @yikyakapp : 📣 ICYMI: After a 4 year hiatus, Yik Yak is available in the App Store again! 💭 Anonymity, location-based, the hot feed & more — everything you used to love about Yik Yak 👋 Now available on iPhone in the US — more countries and devices coming soon! https://yikyak.com/... https://twitter.com/... Beef Wazowski / @wittlett : yikyak is like facebook if it stayed a out harassing women https://twitter.com/... Ron Iver / @ronnui_ : The number 1 college app for knowing where there is free food or committing heinous acts of bigotry https://twitter.com/... David Celis / @davidcelis : doesn't matter if you have “rules” espousing kindness to your local community; unless you have a robust system of moderation, @YikYakApp is gonna be a lot more racist, homophobic NIMBY shit just like the last time https://twitter.com/... Codyyyy / @codyfreshhh : @YikYakApp Great start so far https://twitter.com/... Kalen Allen / @thekalenallen : I remember this app being awfully racist in college...no thanks! https://twitter.com/... @katiefliesaway : thank god yikyak's back, now I can finally stop checking my town's residents' facebook group for important local news https://twitter.com/... @imani_barbarin : Ah, to be young and be racially abused through an app that uses your location to tell you the ugliest thoughts of people around you again. https://twitter.com/... Broti Gupta / @brotigupta : one time I accidentally sent an email I meant to send my dorm to the whole school to ask if anyone had a fork and it's the worst thing that's ever happened to 146 people. welcome back yik yak https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Clarkisha Kent / @iwriteallday_ : The way this app had a hold on all the frats at UChicago. They managed to come up with such *creative* slurs for everyone 🥴 https://twitter.com/... Bmic / @brookemiccio : Literally no one asked for this https://twitter.com/... Stephen / @stepheniscowboy : A cow once got on our campus and the whole of yikyak was just pictures of, thoughts about, or memes about, the cow https://twitter.com/... @mashable : Yes, @YikYakApp is really back. https://mashable.com/... Emma Jerome / @emmajerome : I do not see this going well. https://twitter.com/... Edward Ongweso Jr / @bigblackjacobin : The new normal is here https://twitter.com/... Stephen Schoch / @bigdonkey47 : Fuck yea time to go Shit on my local community https://twitter.com/... Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : Did anyone actually “love” YikYak? https://twitter.com/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : You know how sometimes a group of occult priests will work for years in secret to reawaken an ancient evil? Anyway YikYak is back Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : 2021 is trying hard to outdo 2020 https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Yik Yak’s return restores the local, anonymous model after the company had previously made user handles mandatory—a shift away from anonymity—and introduced a web client for the location-based network. Earlier, it also paired photo sharing with moderation rules for local feeds, underscoring that content controls were already central to the product.
The iPhone relaunch puts that earlier trade-off back in focus: Yik Yak is again making a location-bounded anonymous forum available in the US while users and commentators raise concerns about harassment and discriminatory content.
First-order effects
- US iPhone users can again join Yik Yak’s nearby anonymous boards, while Yik Yak says it intends to extend availability to additional countries and devices.
- Yik Yak’s relaunch immediately renews scrutiny of how it handles racist, homophobic, and harassing posts in local feeds.
Second-order effects
- The return reopens the product question Yik Yak had addressed by requiring handles: whether a local social network can preserve anonymity without making moderation failures its defining user experience.
- A broader rollout would make moderation practices more consequential because the same location-based format would be introduced to more users, countries, and devices.
Third-order effects
- If local anonymous networks continue to revive after attempts to add identity features, the category’s durable dividing line will be governance design—what anonymity is permitted and how local feeds are controlled—rather than simple access to a feed.
- The later Sidechat acquisition and revamp of Yik Yak suggests that the underlying campus-oriented anonymous-social format retained strategic value even after Yik Yak’s original shutdown.
The trend: Local anonymous social apps are testing whether stronger moderation can make a format that once retreated from anonymity viable again.