One of the greatest Westerns in film history, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, comes to mind when I think about one of the most popular and controversial apps in use among students today. Yik Yak, a social media network with no member profiles, only displays chatter among users within a radius of 1.5 miles, or up to 10 miles.
As this New York Times report demonstrates, along with the good of increasingly democratized communication comes some bad – and truly ugly. Not only are anonymous taunts and personal attacks common on Yik Yak but, but as Jonathan Mahler reports, “Since the app was introduced a little more than a year ago, it has been used to issue threats of mass violence on more than a dozen college campuses.”
Problems inevitably arise when people celebrate freedom of communication without an accompanying ethics of communication.
Free speech and privacy are sacred rights we toy with at our peril. That said, no rights should be exercised without responsibilities. And on the frontiers of technology, the former usually occurs well in advance of the latter. That’s simply the nature of technological advancement; there’s little point in bemoaning that reality.
But we must be on guard to correct the problems which inevitably arise when people celebrate freedom of communication without an accompanying ethics of communication. Yik Yak users (many of whom are teens and young adults) converge at the crossroads of hyper-locality and super-anonymity. However, standing in such close proximity – perhaps only a few feet away – from those you can attack with total anonymity is a dangerous thing. It’s the balance of anonymity with distance, or of public awareness with proximity, which allows us to protect both privacy and free speech. Therein lies the challenge.
Think about how, in other settings, hyper-locality plus accountability together create a corrective on the verbal violence that’s so commonly taking place on Yik Yak. Similarly, physical distance can create an illusion of safety which invites our acceptance of anonymous exchanges, even when that anonymity may be abused to target someone with cruelty or express ugly ideas.
I would suggest that, just because we have the technical capacity to connect with one another at the nexus of hyper-locality and super-anonymity, perhaps we ought not to. Am I wrong? I believe we need an ethic of communications first, which we have yet to develop, if we hope to gather at that intersection in a healthy way.
And among the first wisdoms we need in the construction of a new ethic is the insight that acknowledges: Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. In fact, in this case, a wise ethical code may even invite us to restrict others from doing so as well.
?Image credit: Yik Yak

Listed for many years in Newsweek as one of America’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis” and recognized as one of our nation’s leading “Preachers and Teachers,” by Beliefnet.com, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield serves as the President of Clal–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a training institute, think tank, and resource center nurturing religious and intellectual pluralism within the Jewish community, and the wider world, preparing people to meet the biggest challenges we face in our increasingly polarized world.
An ordained Orthodox rabbi who studied for his PhD and taught at The Jewish Theological Seminary, he has also taught the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs an ongoing seminar, and American Jewish University. Rabbi Brad regularly teaches and consults for the US Army and United States Department of Defense, religious organizations — Jewish and Christian — including United Seminary (Methodist), Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (Modern Orthodox) Luther Seminary (Lutheran), and The Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) — civic organizations including No Labels, Odyssey Impact, and The Aspen Institute, numerous Jewish Federations, and a variety of communal and family foundations.
Hirschfield is the author and editor of numerous books, including You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, writes a column for Religion News Service, and appears regularly on TV and radio in outlets ranging from The Washington Post to Fox News Channel. He is also the founder of the Stand and See Fellowship, which brings hundreds of Christian religious leaders to Israel, preparing them to address the increasing polarization around Middle East issues — and really all currently polarizing issues at home and abroad — with six words, “It’s more complicated than we know.”