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"Yik Yak is the Wild West of anonymous social apps," said Danielle Keats Citron, a law professor at University of Maryland and the author of "Hate Crimes in Cyberspace." "It is being increasingly used by young people in a really intimidating and destructive way." Continue reading the main story Colleges are largely powerless to deal with the havoc Yik Yak is wreaking. The app's privacy policy prevents schools from identifying users without a subpoena, court order or search warrant, or an emergency request from a law-enforcement official with a compelling claim of imminent harm.

""Why not shame and embarrass others, especially the vulnerable, if there are no negative consequences? If people had a stronger sense that online abuse would be followed by legal or social sanctions, then we surely would have less of it," according to Danielle Keats Citron, law professor at the University of Maryland and author of 2014's Hate Crimes in Cyberspace."

"Social media regularly manipulates how user posts appear; the abuse of socially shared information has become a collective problem that requires a collective response. This is a call to action. We should work together to demand that companies promise not to make us involuntary accomplices in corporate activities that compromise other people's autonomy and trust."

"The idea is simple (although the software is so complex it took a year to build): before posting a comment in a forum or below an article, users must rate two randomly selected comments from others for quality of argument and civility (defined as an absence of personal attacks or abuse). Ratings are crunched to build up a picture of what users of any given site will tolerate, which is then useful for flagging potentially offensive material."