The app, which is available for iOS and (formerly) Android, allows college students to create and view discussion threads within a 5-mile (8.0 km) radius (termed "Yaks" by the application).

[3] Failing to maintain user engagement, Yik Yak announced on April 28, 2017, that the service would close in the coming week.

[4] For $1 million, Block, Inc. (formally Square, Inc.), purchased Yik Yak's intellectual property and hired several of its former employees.

[5][6] On August 15, 2021, Yik Yak announced via their official website that they were making a comeback, with the app available for download on iOS.

[16] In February 2021, an unnamed team purchased the rights to the YikYak brand from Block, Inc.[17] In May 2022, a student revealed that, after analyzing app data, he was able to gain access to precise locations of Yik Yak users.

[25] One of the biggest criticisms of social media sites and applications is their inherent potential to feed the growing amount of cyberbullying.

[34] Students at Colgate University staged a three-day protest in September 2014 substantially driven by racist messages on Yik Yak.

[35] 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.

Hurtful comments directed at individuals or groups diminish us all and create a divisive atmosphere of distrust and suspicion.”[36][37] 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.

"[38] 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.

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 app is disabled in this area.”[40] The frequency of bullying and harassment that happened on Yik Yak might have been exaggerated by media stories citing specific incidents.

[41] 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.

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".

[56] In addition to the aforementioned manipulation of content by corporate, the presence of extensive cyberbullying on the site was a primary cause of this decline in usage.