![]() Pamela Rutledge, the director of the Media Psychology Research Center, pointed out that “you don’t have to use trigger words to be unkind.” NGL did not respond to emailed requests for comment. content moderation.” It directs users to the website of Hive Moderation, a company that uses a software to filter text, images and audio based on categories like bullying and violence. NGL’s website says that its community guidelines are “coming soon” and that the app uses “world-class A.I. “Anonymity,” he said, “makes this worse.” The result is that if someone leaves an anonymous comment saying your haircut is ugly, for example, you begin to think that everyone thinks your haircut is ugly. Yolo and LMK, anonymous-messaging apps, are being sued by the mother of a teenager who committed suicide (the apps were integrated into Snapchat, whose parent company, Snap, was initially a defendant in the lawsuit, but no longer is). Messages on Yik Yak led several schools to evacuate students in response to bomb and shooting threats. “This really is geared toward kids in middle and high school,” he said.Īs quickly as the app has risen, it has run into criticism.Īnonymous-messaging platforms like ASKfm, Yik Yak, Yolo and LMK have long struggled to contain bullying, harassment and threats of violence. “These apps give you the idea that people are interested in who you are and want to know more about you,” he said. Instead, he said, most of the questions were shallow, asking what his favorite color is or what was the last thing he ate. “I figured there would be more questions about my transition, and I’d be able to give some insight into how to ask those questions appropriately,” he said. Shirley received about a dozen responses after posting a link to NGL on Facebook and Instagram. The experience of Haras Shirley, 26, a school resource officer in Indianapolis, was not as positive. But, he said, “it was actually a warm flood of responses about people’s experiences with me, so it was a really nice surprise.” He said he had seen a few friends use the app and expected “more crass or more lewd” comments. “Who wouldn’t want to know someone’s secret thoughts on them?” “It’s fun to see what people will say when it’s anonymous,” he said. Harold David, 34, an administrator for a fitness company in New York, recently tried out NGL. “Anonymity is a way to open the door to a feeling of space and permission, to a liminal space between realms where you can express something true or speak something true that you can’t in the rest of your life,” said Professor Turkle, the author of “The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir.” In fact, NGL, which was started in November, goes even further, offering users hints about their respondents for $9.99 per week. After all, in many cases, the promise of anonymity is false, or at best qualified - the priest often knows who the confessor is, and apps that collect and distribute secrets are simultaneously collecting their users’ private data. She said that the craving for anonymous self-expression was nothing new, pointing to the confessional booth in some churches as an example.īut, she added, the desire for anonymity has never been about anonymity itself. professor who studies people’s relationships with technology. “Anonymity has always been the secret sauce,” said Sherry Turkle, an M.I.T. It was the 10th most downloaded app in the Apple and Google Play stores in June, Sensor Tower said. NGL, the app’s website explains, “stands for not gonna lie.”ĭuring June and the first half of July, NGL was downloaded about 3.2 million times in the United States, according to Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm. One of the latest arrivals is NGL, which invites users to solicit anonymous questions and comments from their followers on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere. Usually, the cause is some combination of unfettered bullying, harassment or misinformation that blooms within the platform.Īnd yet, the apps keep coming. It seems that every few years, a new anonymous-messaging platform enters the market rapidly gains a fan base, investments and media attention then crashes and burns.
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