As social media continues to dominate the zeitgeist, companies across the country have started to cash in on keeping universities and their communities connected, developing specific social media platforms for students to join.

At Duquesne, Fizz is the dominant platform. According to the company’s website, over 700 universities use Fizz as their primary social media platform, ranging from Ivy League schools like Yale and Princeton to large, private research schools like Notre Dame and Duke.

Fizz functions like Reddit, allowing users to post thoughts and other media to gather upvotes or downvotes. But what’s unique to Fizz is its complete anonymity.

Anonymity is one of the biggest problems with social media. Modern times have allowed so-called “keyboard warriors” to emerge from the depths, weaponizing the fact that their statements online will have little to no impact on their real life, hiding behind their screen and typing stupid half-sentences on their keyboard that would be too egregious to say out loud.

Fizz amplifies this already plaguing issue, with everyone known as “anonymous” unless they take the time to make their own unique username (which most users don’t). Fizz can vary from people asking sincere and valuable questions and interacting with one another to posting unhinged, sometimes cruel things that really should have stayed inside their head.

The biggest problem on Fizz is the lack of accountability. Some posts can walk the fine line between jokes and illicit activity, but the platform can’t do much about it or really crack down on their regulations. Of course, there are still moderators to make sure Fizz is a safe place, but these moderators are typically student volunteers from the university, which can create dangerous echo chambers and introduce biased moderation, furthering the social media app’s issues.

Recently, Fizz has deteriorated from a helpful forum of campus and life tips and advice to sexual confessions, rumor spreading and hate posting about a variety of different people, professors and campus organizations. Any student can freely post their thoughts or opinions with no fear of any real repercussions, as their identity is completely hidden, other than the fact that they are one of the 8,000 enrolled at Duquesne.

It’s important for a university to be connected, and there’s no better way to do so now than create a social media app tailored to a school’s student body. It allows everyone to connect, ask questions, get advice or simply chat about current events, thoughts and feelings on and around campus. But the way that Fizz operates encourages different kinds of hate speech or derogatory posts on their site, leading to the toxic online climate that Fizz contains nowadays.