Wikipedia:Librex

Librex is an anonymous app used by Ivy League students. It was founded by Ryan Schiller, an undergraduate at Yale University, in 2019.



Membership
Librex was first available for students at Yale University and Dartmouth College. It was expanded to the entire Ivy League, including Harvard, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Cornell, and Brown. Students from Yale and Dartmouth remain the most active users. In October 2020, membership was expanded to students at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Premise
Schiller invented the app intending for open political discourse and free expression (hence libre + exchange). According to Schiller, "I realized that it’s really difficult for a lot of people to just ask a simple question on campus, [to] get people’s opinion, express their opinions, or just feel out what other people are thinking. And I wanted to create a space where people could really have those dialogues in a free way … where they knew they wouldn’t be judged and could actually get answers and learn from each other and connect in an authentic and raw manner". The app exists to democratize campus discourse, especially in the era of cancel culture. As a Mathematics and Global Affairs double major, Schiller initially found it difficult to code the app.

Librex has a matching feature where users can request to direct message the poster of a thread or comment. The school is the only available identifier; the user's identity is kept hidden.

Moderators are chosen from the communities of each respective college.

Controversy
As an anonymous platform, Librex faces controversy for hate speech, racist, and incel posts that occasionally appear. Notable figures in college communities have been personally targeted (including Kahlil Greene). Likewise, the app is often compared to Yik Yak, a similar anonymous platform. However, inflammatory posts are often bait to playfully aggravate other users.

In June 2020, actress Skai Jackson doxxed Librex on her personal Twitter page. She found it "so sad people are saying disgusting things on here," attaching screenshots of some racist posts. Backlash to racism on Librex was exacerbated at the time by the recent murder of George Floyd, and Jackson's recent exposure of a Yale woman in the Alpha Phi sorority who used the n-word to refer to a former classmate.

Legacy
Librex, in its current form, is practically an exclusive, low-budget Reddit. It has received offers from Y Combinator and TSAI City at Yale for funding. Currently, the app's development budget relies on Schiller's winnings from online poker while a student at Wyoming Seminary.