Student Ambassadors Paid To Promote Social Media App

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[the fame] and become more bold.”

Fizz requires a verified college email address to join, limiting admission to its forum. This is different from its main competitor, YikYak, which draws from a five-mile radius. Fizz also employs 15 student moderators, who have the power to remove posts they deem inappropriate, in order to prevent offensive content from spreading.

“The uniqueness of the platform comes from it being hyperlocal and specific to Amherst, which is a very small school with intricate social dynamics at play,” said a moderator, who elected to remain anonymous.

Moderators were recruited via LinkedIn, and attended training sessions to prepare them for their roles, including as facilitators and content creators — moderators are required to upload 30 to 40 posts a day, with some flexibility. As moderators, they respond to reported posts and take down posts themselves if they violate guidelines. Violations include personally identifiable negative information, personally-targeted posts with substantial downvotes, and any “prejudice based on race, class, age, ethnicity, body type, gender, or sexual orientation,” according to the app.

“We won’t tolerate racist, intolerant, or bigoted content,” the moderator said.

However, students have genera- ted concern regarding the subjectivity of moderators.

“Because the moderators are other students, there’s definitely a bias with regards to what gets deleted and what is allowed to stay up,” said Ortiz-Gudeman.“Even if something harmful eventually gets deleted, it still gets seen by many people. Screenshots can spread it even further.”

AAS hopes to speak to the app’s executive team to understand how campus moderators are chosen, and what abilities they have, Sayed wrote.

“We want to improve moderation going forward. It is too soon to say exactly what that looks like, whether elected moderators or a larger blanket ban on certain topics or directly naming individuals, but we hope that we as student government and the Fizz team can come to a mutually beneficial solution,” Sayed wrote. “There will always be a place for free, anonymous speech, but it must be balanced by a commitment to preventing harm.”

Beyond the core group of moderators, other students were contacted through LinkedIn and Instagram to join a campus ambassador program, consisting of recruiting peers, attending training, posting about the app, and tabling around campus on launch day.

Cahill learned about Fizz through a teammate, and saw the ambassador role as an opportunity to do something fun and rewarding.

“It’s a fun way to connect with people around campus and the motivation was to give me something to do,” Cahill said. “I didn’t have a ton of homework and I wanted to make a few bucks.”

The moderator said that it “felt like a good financial opportunity to generate some cash flow,” and added that they were set to be paid $500 per month, indefinitely.

Beyond worries regarding the platform’s content, the app has also been the subject of controversy in terms of its privacy protection.

In November 2021, three Stanford students discovered that they could access the app’s database to identify the author of any post, along with personal information like phone numbers and email addresses. The database was also editable, so anyone could change posts or moderator status.

The moderator said that they were briefed on this case, as well as Fizz’s response. Now, users’ personally identifiable information is stored in a separate database, only accessible by Fizz administrators.

“I definitely believe that there should be concerns about data and privacy,” Ortiz-Gudeman said. “I still think that most college students would rather get a cheap laugh from online meme than worry about data.”

Ortiz-Gudeman said she sees the app’s effects as temporary.

“Once the excitement and newness of [Fizz] ends, campus culture will revert to normal,” Ortiz-Gudeman said.