Sarahah App: What Is It, and Why Is Everyone Talking About
This Anonymous Messaging App?
- Sarahah is an anonymous messaging app
- You can send messages even without logging in
- There are concerns of cyberbullying in this anonymous setting
The Sarahah app has taken hold in the social media sphere
over the past week, joining trends such as Prisma app that rose quickly in
public consciousness. Whether it will remain a hit or fade away in a few weeks
is anybody's guess, but for now Sarahah app is something difficult to avoid
seeing in your Facebook news feed. You would be surprised to learn that the
Sarahah app is actually a few months old, and has already been a hit in regions
such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, according to a BBC report. The premise of the
app is pretty simple - send messages to each other, anonymously. Here's
everything you need to know about the app.
Sarahah app - how it works
The idea is simple - you create a Sarahah profile, which
anyone can visit. Even without logging in, people can visit your profile and
leave messages, anonymously. If they have logged in, messages are still
anonymous by default, but users can choose to tag their identity. On the
receivers app, all the incoming messages show up in an inbox, and you can flag
messages, delete them, reply, or favourite them to find them easily later.
But although the app has become very popular, it's quite
polarising. For instance, although it has (at the time of writing) 10,305
5-star reviews on Google Play, it's also got 9,652 1-star reviews, showing a
near 50-50 split in opinion. The creators described it by saying: Sarahah helps
people self-develop by receiving constructive anonymous feedback.
That's at least in part because of fact that anonymity
enables people to act out and behave in hurtful ways without consideration for
consequences. Even positive reviews on the App Store still warn that this app
is not for the weak hearted. Another 5-star review mentions that people are
getting a lot of hateful comments.
Now, to be fair, the developers are also looking at ways to
improve the experience. Privacy features mean that you can remove your profile
from search results, limiting your audience to people who you share your
profile with, and you can also turn off access for unauthorised users - that
is, only people who are logged in will be able to comment. You can also block
senders, so even if you can't see the name of the user, they won't be able to
send2 you a message again.
The rest of the Sarahah experience remains incredibly
barebones though. It's got one purpose in mind, and delivers a quick and ready
experience on that front. It could look better, aesthetically speaking, but
from a functional perspective its design easily serves its purpose.
This isn't the first anonymous messaging app we've seen that
blew up in popularity though. Yik Yak, Secret, and Whisper are some of the
popular apps in recent times to try and fill this function.
For the most part, those apps have been more social, making
the interactions more public. Sarahah's focus is more on messaging and less on
social media, and so visiting another users' profile won't show anything,
unless they choose to make the posts public.
Ultimately though, allowing fully anonymous comments, and
not allowing users to respond to messages means that it's a possible avenue for
bullying. It's very trendy right now, but we've seen other secrecy based
platforms buzz up and then fizzle out too. There are certain key differences to
Sarahah, but it's too soon to say whether it has what it takes to last longer
than the others did.
