Students freaked out about the idea of losing a social media app.

Matthew Boyer of the College Fix reports.

Yik Yak is blocking Princeton for harassment? False report, but real panic

Rogue ‘support agent’ plays on racial tensions following ‘Urban Congo’ spat

When a campus newspaper reported that the entire university might get kicked off a popular social-messaging app because its students were jerks, it threw everyone into a panic.

Yik Yak told The College Fix that report was based a false source. But it raised the issue of how explosive the app has become on the nation’s campuses.

The service, which lets users in a specific geographic area post anonymously to a single feed for their community, has already blocked itself from middle and high schools following reports of cyberbullying. Its policy prohibits users under 17.

Yet some college administrators, student leaders and campus activists want Yik Yak to treat their schools the same way – either do more to crack down on racist, sexist or other offensive speech, or face blocking from their campus networks.

The service has some technical capability to identify users when asked: This past weekend Yik Yak helped the FBI identify a student who threatened a mass shooting at Oklahoma State University.

‘Possibly disabling submissions from this region entirely’

The Daily Princetonian reported last week that a “Yik Yak support agent” had told a student the service was considering banning Yik Yak content within the university’s region.

“We have received an unusually large number of reports from this area, in the past few days, which has gotten our attention,” the agent wrote in an email to the student, according to the paper.