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Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

onezero.medium.com

11–20 of 136 posts

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#11
post #6

I tried Nextdoor but quickly closed the app when it was filled with rumors about who in the neighborhood isn't cleaning up after their dog. Maybe I'm throwing away the baby with the bath water, but I don't feel like I miss out on all that much by forgoing yet another social media platform vying for my attention

I gave it up during the run up to the election. Felt way better off afterwards.

I feel Nextdoor needs to heavily moderate political and racist discussions, but the person-power for this is probably too high until better AI tools come.

In the meantime, they can create more focused discussion and topics than being open-ended. Lost pets, local handymen (and women), and new shops or dining seem to be the most harmonious.

Sadly, crime reports will get comments about legality of shooting one-another, and discussions end poorly. They should turn off comments for those reports.

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#13

Were small-town papers just as toxic, or is it just my community here in SF? In the last month, on NextDoor, they doxxed and banded together to get the mentally-challenged skateboarder who’s been my neighborhood for years, and had him arrested because a user felt threatened by him standing around the neighborhood shouting obscenities during manic episodes. (He’s now in jail and this NextDoor thread is trying to make…

I came to say the same thing. NextDoor is toxic. In our neighbor we had the same sort of issue with a mentally-challenged teenager. He likely stole someone’s election sign and the neighborhood flipped out. Zero love. Zero compassion for a mentally challenged boy.

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#14

Not sure what to think of this article, as it runs very counter to my own ancedatal experience. I'm a realtor in a 35,000 person town (like described in the article) and I advertise on Nextdoor (or should I say I "sponsor" a neighborhood), but I've never had a lead come in that way and I've never heard anyone locally ever mention using nextdoor for anything. Meanwhile, everyone knows about the various Facebook groups…

I think it's very community-to-community. They have hot and influential areas, where the network effect is strong enough to overcome the critical mass required. Also, I imagine they have "bad" mods who kill communities, and "good" mods who don't.

Yeah, that's kind of my assumption as well. And same goes for the various FB groups -- locally, there's one group people go to be deliberately obnoxious and snotty, and the other to be polite and informative, and everybody in town knows which is which.

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#15
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave it up during the run up to the election. Felt way better off afterwards.

I feel Nextdoor needs to heavily moderate political and racist discussions, but the person-power for this is probably too high until better AI tools come. In the meantime, they can create more focused discussion and topics than being open-ended. Lost pets, local handymen (and women), and new shops or dining seem to be the most harmonious. Sadly, crime reports will get comments about legality of shooting one-another,…

I recently moved. My last neighborhood had aggressive moderation; by the time you clicked a notification for a political thread it'd be gone. In my new neighborhood we're still arguing about Trump yard signs.

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#16
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave it up during the run up to the election. Felt way better off afterwards.

I feel Nextdoor needs to heavily moderate political and racist discussions, but the person-power for this is probably too high until better AI tools come. In the meantime, they can create more focused discussion and topics than being open-ended. Lost pets, local handymen (and women), and new shops or dining seem to be the most harmonious. Sadly, crime reports will get comments about legality of shooting one-another,…

[flagged]

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#17

Were small-town papers just as toxic, or is it just my community here in SF? In the last month, on NextDoor, they doxxed and banded together to get the mentally-challenged skateboarder who’s been my neighborhood for years, and had him arrested because a user felt threatened by him standing around the neighborhood shouting obscenities during manic episodes. (He’s now in jail and this NextDoor thread is trying to make…

Small town papers had letters to the editor that could get quite colorful but there was a modicum of class on the part of most editors not to publish to the truly disgusting. Nextdoor style discussion were previously relegated to inner social circles after dropping your kids off at soccer.

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#18

I lasted about one week on Nexdoor. Maybe it's just my neighborhood, but it felt like the weirdest passive-aggressive digital version of everyone peeking out their blinds. Endless worries about someone getting packages stolen, what the city was doing to our park, who in the neighborhood was secretly Antifa or QAnon, and endless screenshots of security cameras. Noped right out.

I think services like this just attract this sort of person. Paranoid busybodies are going to be overwhelmingly more interested in commenting on this sort of system, so that's what it skews towards. Everyone else understands that they're just living in a regular neighborhood, and no, non white people aren't drug dealers so there's not really anything to talk about.

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#20

Were small-town papers just as toxic, or is it just my community here in SF? In the last month, on NextDoor, they doxxed and banded together to get the mentally-challenged skateboarder who’s been my neighborhood for years, and had him arrested because a user felt threatened by him standing around the neighborhood shouting obscenities during manic episodes. (He’s now in jail and this NextDoor thread is trying to make…

it's interesting that despite using real names and location(ish), the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory still seems to be in full force on NextDoor.
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