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Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

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Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#121

Post by renewiltord »

briffle wrote: post #97
spoonjim wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a suburban area where you cannot get a house under $2 million. It is extraordinarily safe. Yet if you read the NextDoor it seems like 1970s New York, with crime and danger around every corner. Eyeball-oriented media always algorithmically boosts sensational news, which simply doesn’t reflect reality. Traditional print media, which would be owned by an independently wealthy elitist family, didn’t need those…

We had a post with short video of a 'suspicious white car, casing the neighborhood' several days in a row at 4am. A dozen posts about how things are going to hell, etc, followed by a post: Hi mark, it's my car. I've delivered your newspaper every morning for 5 years now.

Haha, this was me a couple of weeks ago. You see my car had been broken into right outside my home around three in the morning and someone had trashed my motorcycle (this whole thing was going to cost me $5000). I sort of don't pick fights with people so this was unusual. So when someone was walking around slowly outside my home at three, I assumed he was the criminal. By the time I was outside, all I saw was him in his sedan racing down the street.

So I went inside and texted my neighbour and asked him for his video. At first he thought it was the perp but then on looking closely he said "Oh he's delivering newspapers".

I was absolutely mortified but he understood, having had his car broken into as well. Being a victim of crime really twists you. I was very angry for a while. But I'm through it now. When I was rushing out to confront the poor newspaper guy, I fantasized about blocking him in to the cul de sac and calling the police. Can you imagine if I'd done that? Ugh. The real complaint, I think I have about the whole incident is the damage it did to my psyche.

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#122

Post by swebs »

drdeadringer wrote: post #62

I don't remember local or small-town papers to [generally] being toxic or cesspools of hate. However, one of my True Jokes is "NextDoor: Hate Your Neighbors" just as "Facebook: Hate Your Family & Friends" and "Twitter: Hate Your Heroes". NextDoor sounds good, but it generally proves not. Everything from "suspicious teenagers on the sidewalk again" [meaning: local kids walking to their local home from the local school…

>I don't remember local or small-town papers to [generally] being toxic or cesspools of hate.

My local paper used to publish Tom Tomorrow, which is the most toxic and vitriolic comic I've seen outside the internet.

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#123

Post by Tempest1981 »

goles wrote: post #60
jedberg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The platform is fine. Like any social media, it amplifies existing biases that the population it serves already has. But the specific issue with Next-door is that by design it serves a very limited population, so if that small population has any sort of bias, it is massively amplified.

Ok so what is your solution to this problem?

Make posts visible only to those within 2 blocks, or around 150 households who are close neighbors. Why 150 and not 1500 or 15000? Dunbar's number. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#124

Post by throwaheyy »

Noos wrote: post #113
cratermoon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do you want to call the cops on him and throw him in jail, or would you prefer to do something constructive for him and the community?

do you want to wait until he has a manic episode and has a knife for some reason, or rapes someone? There is no "constructive" thing for this, apart form him being forced to get treatment if he won't do so willingly. Usually if he's there long enough to be "the screaming skateboard guy" it isn't happening.

How on earth did you go from random shouting to “knives” and “rape”? Your attitude is part of the problem.

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#125

Post by fingerlocks »

drdeadringer wrote: post #62

I don't remember local or small-town papers to [generally] being toxic or cesspools of hate. However, one of my True Jokes is "NextDoor: Hate Your Neighbors" just as "Facebook: Hate Your Family & Friends" and "Twitter: Hate Your Heroes". NextDoor sounds good, but it generally proves not. Everything from "suspicious teenagers on the sidewalk again" [meaning: local kids walking to their local home from the local school…

Odd, my NextDoor feed is really quite pleasant. Mostly people just selling odds and ends or looking for a handyman. I wonder how rare that is?

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#126

Post by teorema »

fingerlocks wrote: post #125
drdeadringer wrote: post #62

I don't remember local or small-town papers to [generally] being toxic or cesspools of hate. However, one of my True Jokes is "NextDoor: Hate Your Neighbors" just as "Facebook: Hate Your Family & Friends" and "Twitter: Hate Your Heroes". NextDoor sounds good, but it generally proves not. Everything from "suspicious teenagers on the sidewalk again" [meaning: local kids walking to their local home from the local school…

Odd, my NextDoor feed is really quite pleasant. Mostly people just selling odds and ends or looking for a handyman. I wonder how rare that is?

Near me it's that, but half posts looking for owners of "lost" cats and wildlife, and sudden events, like "why is the major road shut down at the moment?"

I get the local newspaper analogy but am not sure it's quite right, at least where I am. Here it's more like a Facebook group for a specific location.

Federated systems always seemed to me to be a good match for the type of geographically localized communities Nextdoor us targeting.

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#127

Post by randompwd »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #111
cratermoon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But small-town police blotters were (are?) hilarious. https://www.npr.org/2012/04/07/150148340/small-towns-police-... NextDoor is Gladis Kravitz meets Archie Bunker, minus the humorous aspects.

The police blotter for the richest towns in the Bay Area are pretty funny too. It's amazing that the police get called when someone's walking their dog without a leash.

who else would be called? That's why the justice system exists - to solve matters without resorting to feudalistic violence.

i dont live in US and it's only ignorant people who walk their dog off leash in residential neighbourhoods.

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#128

Post by paul_f »

fingerlocks wrote: post #125
drdeadringer wrote: post #62

I don't remember local or small-town papers to [generally] being toxic or cesspools of hate. However, one of my True Jokes is "NextDoor: Hate Your Neighbors" just as "Facebook: Hate Your Family & Friends" and "Twitter: Hate Your Heroes". NextDoor sounds good, but it generally proves not. Everything from "suspicious teenagers on the sidewalk again" [meaning: local kids walking to their local home from the local school…

Odd, my NextDoor feed is really quite pleasant. Mostly people just selling odds and ends or looking for a handyman. I wonder how rare that is?

Here in Florida it is mostly "what kind of snake is this?"

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#129

Post by cosmodisk »

I live in London. When the pandemic started last year, our street organised themselves into a WhatsApp group and quite quickly majority of the household were on it. Our next door neighbour even made a list of households with the names next to them. Initially it looked OK, as most things when you just getting started. People were offering each other to pick up groceries or some other services in case they can't leave their house,etc. Just for the context, the street is in an affluent area with very high stats on virtually any social measure. Also, most properties are residential houses with only a handful apartment blocks. After only a couple of weeks,if not sooner, the usual patterns started to appear: people were trying to find their position in the group,so organisers, helpers,fools,and other categories started to emerge. People started sharing their nonproblems and asking for help,while subsequently ignoring all the advices given to them. Entire street kept quiet for days about an old campervan parked on the street when someone plastered it with abusive writings,until someone said they don't support that kind of behaviour. Shortly after the entire street joined and made tons of comment on how bad it is. Then people complain about their neighbours without even trying to talk to them. Others pretend they care about some causes,while doing the exact opposite and etc. Eventually the group was getting less and less posts and it got to the point where the street was before the pandemic: quiet, very few know their neighbours 3 houses down the road, social classes,etc. All this on a street with less than a hundred buildings, so I can imagine what larger neighborhoods and groups are like.

Re: Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper

#130

Post by cosmodisk »

Rapzid wrote: post #77
ravenstine wrote: post #57

For me, Nextdoor is primarily people looking for lost pets, complaining about "suspicious" strangers, and making dubious crime reports. That's hardly a replacement for a local newspaper.

In my city for a while there it was 3-4x as many people reporting *found* pets compared to lost pets; "Dang people, stop discarding your pets." Probably the hot topic these days is lawn/porch theft.

>lawn/porch theft

What's that? People steal the actual lawn or things off the porch?

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