Anonymous society APP all died of a problem, which matters a lot but is doomed to no solution.

Editor’s note: Miranda Katz is the editorial assistant of Backchannel. In her article, she first explained the background of the rise of anonymous society’s applications, and then took Secret, Yik Yak and Whisper as examples to explore the reasons for the failure of anonymous society’s applications. After combing, it seems that the dark side of the public in the anonymous situation can never be avoided. This not only makes us think about the future of anonymous society’s application, but also inspires us to think about the essence of human nature. The following is the text.

Four days after Donald Trump was elected president, the former CEO of a failed anonymous society media application posted a Twitter：Secret V2 is coming. It’s too important for us. About a year and a half ago, Secret was closed because of the prevalence of cyber bullying and the competition from Yik Yak. Later, the United States gradually realized that the questionnaire could not reflect the political tendency of the country, and people began to pay attention to the power of those who were silent. Shocked Democrats looked at their right-leaning friends suspiciously, wondering if they were afraid to speak on mainstream social media for fear of being attacked.

At the same time, on Reddit, a Trump supporter friend community has expanded to about 270,000 subscribers-now it is close to 380,000 subscribers. They discussed their love for Trump and dislike for Clinton in the community, and made some rude and paranoid remarks under the cover of anonymity. There, Trump supporters freely expressed their opinions. However, a free voter who doesn’t know about this website may never see these views. This makes a question in the mind of David Byttow, the former CEO of Secret: If people in our social network are so self-righteous, are the words of the world we see true?

The original Secret application was launched in early 2014, which allows users to post anonymously and view anonymous posts from their friends. Byttow thinks this is "anti-Facebook, where you can really say words that represent your truest self, not your best self."

Secret and similar anonymous applications such as Yik Yak and Whisper are hailed as the future of social media. They solved the real-name registration system controversy of Facebook and the hype planning of Instagram. Anonymous applications have returned to the form of simple message boards, bringing the early Internet culture to life, but at the same time, they have been re-engineered to adapt to the social network era. Despite raising $200 million, anonymous applications are still the poison of social applications. The reason is simple: the only purpose of an online social network is to connect people. Without names, what people say becomes dispensable and meaningless.

In the autumn of 2014, Yik Yak suddenly rose-ACB was quiet. Suddenly, it seems that all the students are using this application, posting sharp witticisms, opinions, party propaganda and malicious gossip from time to time. My friend and I happily posted one of our good friends on the hot spot and got hundreds of like screenshots and sent them to each other. This is the perfect procrastination tool-ACB has become the mainstream and adopted beautiful design. Yik Yak certainly has greater ambitions, hoping that he can become the Twitter of the younger generation.

At the same time, Secret itself has grown stronger and stronger. As a hidden center, there is a notorious gossip in Silicon Valley-here, people may spread rumors about the acquisition of Evernote, or discuss which startups use marijuana as an interview intimidation tactic. Secret and Yik Yak grew rapidly, raising $35 million and $73.5 million respectively in the first seven months. They are very addicted, Byttow said. Today, people tell him that they still can’t help deleting and reinstalling Secret, and they struggle with their social desires, hoping that they can stop wasting time on social applications. He hopes to make Secret a real competitor to Instagram and Facebook. It seems that his dream may come true for some time: after it revealed the inside information of its birthplace in Silicon Valley, Secret ranked first in the download list of app stores in eight countries.

But excessive popularity will bring more opportunities for mistakes-and more censorship. Because Yik Yak is spread all over universities and high schools, parents and administrators are increasingly worried that it will promote school bullying. Schools began to ban the use of applications on their networks and asked students to delete them from their mobile phones. Secret has also proved to be extremely difficult to adapt because its user base has expanded. Byttow said the team "can’t cover it, can’t control it, and it makes us forget the original vision."

Those negative posts shaped their reputation, not other attributes of the application. "Suddenly, many people spend a lot of time participating in these anonymous applications." Karen North, director of the Digital Social Media Program at the University of Southern California, said. The discovery of dark content in the application opened a burst of negative news. "It is the questionable behavior that makes it newsworthy, not its anonymity." North said.

Both companies are busy cleaning up users’ vulgar remarks. Secret has established a team of 90 full-time moderators, but it is difficult to conduct effective audit. The application is centered on the group of friends, and the bad information may be nuanced or coded, and it is necessary to understand the background of the publisher to alleviate these contents. Yik Yak made even greater design changes-and found that its behavior alienated users. In August 2016, Yik Yak changed its original optional "alias" into mandatory, because aliases would make users more responsible for the information they posted, thus curbing irresponsible people. Users protested that the move "goes against the whole idea of Yik Yak." In November, the company gave up the idea, apologized and made the alias optional again, but it has caused harm. The core users of this application, who can only gather on pornographic content in complete anonymity, have lost interest in this application. When I looked up the recent records of Yak in my alma mater, the posts that appeared on the hot list once got more than hundreds of likes, but now they can only get about 30 likes at most.

At the same time, Whisper failed to rise to a new height, but it did not fall to the same height as Secret or Yik Yak. It is eager to become a social network that does not rely on social graphs. The application has the function of finding nearby people and forming group chats, but pushing shows popular posts of users all over the world by default. "If you want to be meaningful to someone, it’s important for you to let them see it-if they never see the post, it’s meaningless." Jeremy Liew, a partner of Lightspeed Ventures, which led Whisper’s $3 million Series A investment, said. If your victim doesn’t notice that he is bullied at all, your bullying will not satisfy you.

Whisper has solved the challenge of its own audit by using machine learning system, which is called "arbiter" and automatically deletes posts that violate its rules. A large security team with more than 130 people will also solve more advanced problems that artificial intelligence may miss. But apart from being unable to connect with friends or related communities, Whisper has a major problem: it will soon make people feel bored. The application is quick and legal-and has nothing to do with most people.

In April 2015, Secret died. By December 2016, Yik Yak had laid off 60% of its employees, and last month, The Verge reported that the company was turning to a collaborative chat application for non-anonymous university courses. At the same time, Whisper has become a "future media company" and is currently the 86th in the Apple App Store’s social application download list-following a gray application that helps users get free Snapchat fans.

From the bulletin board in the early days of the Internet to today’s Subreddit, anonymity always has a place on the Internet. But as Secret, Yik Yak and Whisper discovered, anonymous society network is a contradictory thing. An anonymous application that relies on social relations is too easy to lead to related illegal activities and quickly becomes an anti-social factor. An anonymous application that lacks real world or geographical connection is trying to become addictive at the same time. What will work more or less is that an anonymous or pseudonym group acts around interests, where people’s identity is not as important as the passion to participate.

In Byttow’s view, a fatal flaw of anonymous society media is that using applications will not get good results. Users cannot establish relationships or damage their reputation when operating anonymously. Sometimes people may want to share some information anonymously, but this is not enough to support a network. What makes the application difficult is positive reinforcement: more fans, more friends, and more forwarding. "For most people who want to communicate with an audience," North said, "people want to be praised for what they say and do. Anonymity meets the needs of these people. "

However, Byttow tried again, with the re-launch of Secret. He has now developed it as a sub-project, so many challenges remain unresolved. He plans to make it an invitation system to keep it small and easy to manage. This will solve the problem of auditing and perhaps help maintain the sense of community-at present, Byttow says he is "interested in using it with his friends and see what happens."

Anonymous society media program did something wrong. The biggest mistake is that their reward mechanism (such as praise mechanism) cannot be extended to real identity. At least that’s my situation: after Yak, which was published in my college days, made many hits on popular pages, I got tired of sending screenshots to my friends … and then started tweeting instead.

Translated from: wormhole flip Translator ID: Gary Jun Editor: Hao Pengcheng