A Subpar Copy
Looking for a social media platform that'll leave you feeling frustrated? Sidechat is your ticket. This app imitates the likes of Twitter and Reddit without adding anything new. Its only selling point, the university server feature, turned out to be a nightmare.
I joined Sidechat to connect with students on my university’s server, but a glitch logged me out, and I discovered the app locks you out for a whopping 90 days if you dare to log out of your university, making it impossible for me to access the server for 3 months. Despite numerous attempts to contact support, they've completely ignored me.
If you’re not a university student, save yourself the trouble and stick to Reddit as it’s literally the same thing but better, even Twitter/X is a better experience – they're light-years ahead of this platform.Bring back Yik Yik
Yik Yak was historically a great hyper local app: a way to engage with people in your immediate community. The app’s acquisition by Sidechat has ruined this use case. Yik Yak poster are either forced into joining college communities (presumably that if the college from which they graduated) or into abandoning the app altogether after years of use. Way to alienate the user base!
Additionally, the content moderation is far too heavy handed. I’m a political moderate; any political comments I’ve made are well within mainstream discourse. I’ve been given timeouts on multiple occasions, and as near as I can tell the reason is entirely because someone disagreed with the position I took. Meanwhile plenty of anti-Semitic and other extremist views are flourishing.Removed grad students within a week of a lawsuit
Harvard just got sued by a grad student over failing to handle antisemitism on campus. Sidechat comments were mentioned in the lawsuit. Within a week, all of the grad students were kicked off of the app. I don’t think that this is a coincidence.
Grad students are part of the community and it was nice to have a private community to ask questions. If anything, they could have at least grandfathered the existing accounts. Alumni get to keep their accounts so there is no sense in it. I’m still getting notifications of replies that I can’t interact with. We weren’t given an explanation - it just looked like we were banned for no reason.
There have been undergrad students in all of my classes and on my group projects. This forced disconnect is silly.