Nextdoor is replacing the small-town paper
onezero.medium.comI 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 but Nosey Nancy is too busy "Taking Notes & Reporting To Police"] to "if public transit comes here so will the meth-head homeless pulling the rug out from under my overpriced house" [reality is baseless fears about recycling, commuting, and less cars on the road].
I worked in journalism at the tail end of the local paper era. My first degree is actually an associate’s in journalism and I won several state-level awards for journalism in college in the late 90s. (In fact, my two year college paper swept our category the two years I was there.) Out of the twenty or so people on that staff, all of us started with paying jobs in journalism, but only two of us now work in anything even related to that field, and those two people are in marketing.
Most of us got into the field we’d studied for and were immediately run out because we were (cheap) liberal 22 year olds that wanted to write about millennial social justice, our editors and owners wanted to run as many ads as possible at the lowest price point, and our readers were generally older than our parents and wanted to feel something that validated their feelings that the world was going to hell but wouldn’t pay even the cost of paper for a subscription.
Since this situation didn’t meet anyone’s needs at the price point they were willing to pay, what’s left for information sharing now that we’re all too far spread out for a pub is Nextdoor.
I wonder what the effect of CNN and then Fox News was on paper subscriptions during the 1990s. Wikipedia shows that revenue peaked in 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#/media/F... But it looks like circulation began it's decline in 1990: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/01/circulation... Especially with subscriptions declining, I can absolutely imagine newspapers using every trick in the book to keep revenues increasing, until one day they were out of tricks, which ultimately had the effect of accelerating their demise for having cheapened their product.
EDIT: Weird. The Pew revenue graph site (below the circulation graph) has the same shape as the Wikipedia revenue graph, but seems to be shifted later by 6+ years. The Wikipedia numbers are inflation adjusted, so I'm guessing the Pew graph isn't adjusted?
My new home comes with a Ring I haven’t bothered to replace yet. Apparently Ring has some sort of Next Door like thing built into it now. The moment I saw someone accusing a UPS delivery man of being a porch pirate is the moment I realized these people were nuts and not worth my time.
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?
My ND was just fine until fairly recently. Lost cat. Someone egged my car. Yard sale this weekend.
Then some neighbors started talking about national events, and had their posts deleted.
This spawned a virus of censorship/free-speech/moderator-oppression posts that are self-fulfilling. Taking them down (discussing moderation in the "general" thread is not allowed) spawns more outrage. Leaving them up lets more people fester, foment and hivemind on what victims they are.
It's extra messy because there's a local development that has the ND community up in arms and they're using toxic emotion-based posts to get attention. Deleting them for being unneighborly ("lawmaker didn't acquiesce when I emailed him, so he's corrupt and ought to be locked in jail!") is mixed in with the above "oppression" discussions.
In the end, giving /everyone/ a voice back to /everyone/ creates a cacophony of outrage that has made me appreciate the curated content that we (used to?) get from newspapers.
Here in Florida it is mostly "what kind of snake is this?"
Ha! In most of the United States, if you memorize the few venomous snakes (the pit vipers and the corals), you know every snake that's not one of those is harmless.
But in Florida there's an additional rule: If it's big enough to eat your German Shepherd, it's a Burmese Python and you need to kill the unfortunate creature because it's invasive.
https://nypost.com/2020/10/09/18-9-foot-burmese-python-caugh...
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.
likewise. Folks selling stuff, looking for odd jobs or recommendations, looking for lost cat or dog or announcing one that they found. Once in a while, "saw something suspicious or heard a loud sound" anyone know about it?
Reality is a bit different. On next door the most outraged / strongest voices dominate.
So very commonly now - let's say you have a bunch of kids ridding on the wrong side of the road, or someone with two off leash pitbulls bite someone, you get immediate claims of racism or similar if anyone suggests anything other than total understanding of the folks acting in what might be called an anti-social way.
The folks outraged and labeling others do drive down participation. I certainly no longer participate - despite being a significant donor to dem causes, a phone banker for what used to be traditional liberal issues etc.
Nextdoor: How fast can someone be offended by what someone else says - is probably the more correct title
Don't forget suspicious brown/black man in a hoodie!
>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.
This sounds very judgmental about NextDoor users. They are voicing their concerns about their neighborhood and community. Why do you have to say anything about their community, especially if you don't live there?
You also have the right to voice concerns about your neighborhood and community. I would assume you want others to respect your right to voice your concerns, just as they would expect you to respect their right to voice their concerns.
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 AdSense revenues and would instead lead with articles about the local school play and flower festival, and keep the crime in a police blotter, which does reflect the experience of living here.
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.
What happened after that? That sounds like the beginnings of a really great movie about an unexpected duo becoming friends.
Or a BBC news at 10 segment "American postman found dead in driveway" (Guns and paranoia don't mix)
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.
You call nobody. Or maybe your gossip buddy.
Then what enforces the rules? Someone has to enforce the rules. What is the purpose of a dog leash ordinance if there is no enforcement mechanism?
Damn right I call the police on quality of life infractions, the difference is I don’t try to settle it amicably first, since that’s a one-way ticket to becoming an infamous viral sensation like “Dog Leash Dan” or “Leashy Larry.”
Have you wondered how and why the area is so safe? Have you wondered why houses are so expensive in your neighborhood?
It’s safer because of the vigilant neighbors reporting crime and keeping community engaged. The increased safety increase house values, because people want to live in safe neighborhoods.
Ask yourself or your parents why they chose to move to the neighborhood and still live there? The safe neighborhood is likely the top reason.
It’s safe because everyone who can afford to be anywhere near here has too much to lose to bother getting involved in crime. It’s why this community fought tooth and nail to prevent public transit from reaching here.
It’s also safe because the police know everyone who lives here and keep close tabs on anyone who doesn’t.
> especially if you don't live there
I do live in the neighborhood NextDoor area where I speak of, and my experience is not uncommon. I have seen the online NextDoor and have in-person physically walked the lived reality as well.
"In Other News", where I live has an outdated reputation. That outdated reputation lives on despite reality and my personal efforts to tell and demonstrate otherwise. Folks on NextDoor tend to be those of long life and//or long memory. Psychohistorical math [albeit perhaps Asimov-in-Reverse a bit here] comes in to play.
Over the long run, the folks who really want to be listened to -- and have a legit and right to that -- have clocks in their perspectives to adjust. Their voice needs similar.
The neighbors sounds like vigilant people that are very engaged in safer neighborhood and keep the community engaged. Most likely, these neighbors are the reason for increase in safer neighborhood.
Why do you choose to live in this neighborhood? People can choose to live in less engaged neighborhood.
Because idle gossip is toxic?
If the concern is something criminal, by all means voice it to the police. If the concern is with the maintenance of your building voice it to your landlord.
If your concern is you dont like the style of clothes your neighbour wears, please go back to high school.
I have universally heard the same from anyone I know who uses nextdoor. Similar types of posts gain traction in my neighborhood, too. Flamebait topics tend to get a lot of engagement. Regardless of their right to do so, some people tend to feel empowered to say some nasty things from behind the comfort of their keyboard... and nextdoor is giving those people a soap box they might not deserve.
No, it is not.
The small town paper where I live sends someone to sit through city council meetings, which at times decide important things, but often debate relatively unimportant things in lengthly, excruciating detail. Like that time I went to comment about a housing issue that was important to me and had to sit through a discussion of the city sign code.
In any event, even people who care about one thing or the other are not going to report on the important goings-on of your city council or planning commission. If they happen to, it probably won't be anything like an unbiased account.
The article makes the point with the story of a crucial school-funding referendum that failed. They spoke to people who believe that widespread rumors on Nextdoor caused the devastating swing in popular opinion.
So while local newspapers may still be reporting on schoolboard meetings, those articles aren't necessarily being read by voters. Instead, many voters are now drawing their information from Nextdoor.
So it's replacing local newspapers in that sense -- as the source of information.
Your comment speaks to the reasons why it shouldn't replace a local newspaper. But the greater worry is: maybe it still is, anyways.
Well, you're lucky. Where I am, the education report appears to just rephrase whatever they get from the teachers union.
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 that people use locally for referrals for cleaners, landscapers, local politics, et al.
Again, could be a geographical thing or just my anecdata, so FWIW.
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.
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.
don't forget about every loud sound being "gunshots??"
Hah, I honestly believe you should have to pass a test distinguishing the sounds of gunshots, fireworks, and trucks backfiring before you’re allowed to post on nextdoor.
The feed in my neighborhood might be a little different, but I think you forgot to mention real estate listings and ads for surveillance cameras.
> ads for surveillance cameras
How much of that advertisement is based off of "Paranoid Paige" with too much time on their hands?
Not to necessarily rail against using metrics, but metrics can be tilted -- if everyone's Paranoid Paige, how deep and legit is that gold mine?
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?
This is the best and most generous description of NextDoor I have found so far.
Nextdoor seems to be whatever the local moderators make of it. Mine will censor political views (mostly from the right). They will also censor posts related to breaking of unpopular laws (such as those related to pet ownership responsibilities like leashes and waste removal).
I doubt that Nextdoor corporate has any oversight into the performance of the local mods, and there's no mechanism in place to report such abuse. Nextdoor is far less open than any newspaper, which will usually at least have an editorial page.
Wait, what? Pet ownership responsibilities like leashes and waste removal are "unpopular laws"?
They likely meant a large part of the society thinks those laws shouldn't apply to them.
I gave up on NextDoor after one day. I subscribe to 2 local daily papers. I get a wider range of news and the awareness of local events/new restaurants than I do online (where my news consumption is 90% via RSS (innoreader, excellent app btw)).
I've found that since covid, the local papers have done some impressive longform deep dive stories (science, health, human interest). NextDoor is a social media platform which trades on emotional responses, I'm saddened to read that it may be the only news source for some localities.
Many places have exactly zero local daily papers. My town had a labor of love for a few years before the publisher fell ill. Now there's basically nothing unless something is big enough to hit a more broadly targeted audience. So Next Door/Facebook. (7K person town.)
How is the quality of news sources for your area that you find on facebook? I try to get as little news from fb as possible.
I hate to say it, but FB is invaluable for those of us in rural areas. There is a local paper, but it's mostly an exercise in stenography. Small county of 8,000 people. Everyone knows everyone. And the paper is probably hanging by a thread, so they don't want to piss anyone off.
So I rely more on FB. Follow all the local government agencies. Every one of them has an FB page. That gives a rough idea of what's going on. Comments on those pages are usually uncensored. Most of the comments are in agreement or cranks, but sometimes you get a nugget of truth that goes against whatever the agency said. That's been especially valuable in the pandemic. My local health agency hasn't behaved well, and the critics with inside knowledge frequently comment.
There's also local groups for my zip code that help piece together what happened. Another good, though often overlooked source, are pages from members of the opposition party. In my area, that's unsurprisingly the Democrats. They'll frequently highlight what's going wrong locally.
All of this doesn't replace the value created by a local paper that's willing to at least occasionally be critical or investigative. But it's much better than either nothing, or relying solely on the in-person gossip from neighbors. Pity it has to be on Facebook, but there isn't an alternative. Nextdoor in my area is pretty much worthless.
There's basically zero information in general.
Maybe it is just my nextdoor area but very little relevant community information is found, in fact most all discussions of schools, local politics, and HOAs immediately disappear. Most posts are looking for a local service provider or missing pets. That coupled with the non chronological feeds make me think that Nextdoor only wants to become an Angie's List and not a source of actual good for my community.
Nextdoor wants to make money. It's hard to make money and do good
Doing good is a market externality...
I must wonder whether the misinformation is the excuse and not the reason, as there are plenty of places in America where school funding is a major state issue and that doesn't change a thing.
Oklahoma has a shortage of teachers and election after election, the population collectively shrugs.
I haven't ever heard someone openly oppose education. Privately, I have heard plenty of people say "kids can make do" and "I don't want to pay for other people's kids."
- I oppose growing education bureaucracy where little of the increase in education funding goes to teacher salary, and instead to rent-seeking bureaucrats that waste tax-payer money - Public schools have failed kids in the US due to overly powerful teachers unions who protect terrible teacher and do injustice to students prospects. I'd rather pay for charter schools, not some general state education budget.
You're simultaneously claiming that not enough money goes to teachers salaries and that the teachers unions are too powerful. I'm not really sure I follow.
It’s not weird to me. GP is arguing that the teachers unions don’t yield (sufficient) positive outcome and using their powers the wrong way, being part of the inefficient potentially corrupt bureaucracy.
Whether that’s the case over there, I have no idea. But it’s not inconsistent.
In my hometown I don’t recall a single person beating against the teacher’s union. Sure on particular issues there would be occasional tension, especially with negotiations with private schools, but no one argued for their abolition.
Not enough money goes to good teachers and too much money goes to bad teachers.
Teachers unions enable bad teachers by excusing their behavior. Doesn't do much to help good teachers.
What does teachers unions do to help good teachers become better teachers and helping students?
Teachers unions help bad teachers by preventing vast majority from being fired for being bad teachers. Everyone knows who the bad teachers are in the system.
Teachers unions make money by controlling the teachers and politicians in the system.
Worth pointing out that regardless of its merits either way, this argument is in total bad faith unless you’d say the same thing about police unions. Bonus points for bringing it up at any passing mention of public employees, the way the teachers union rant comes up. Somehow that rarely seems to be the case.
Not going to pursue this any further bc nothing pointlessly derails a thread like arguing about public education (see also: nextdoor), and nothing is more boring than arguing over how much money someone else “deserves”.
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
The nextdoor rumor mill isn't the bathwater. It is the baby.
I understand why it might be harmful (or at least annoying) to see people spreading rumors about who isn't cleaning up after their dog, but I'm curious how you might better handle the problem of people in the neighborhood not cleaning up after their dog.
Install a camera on the front of your house and if you see a dog shit on the street you grab the video and forward it to authorities.
I have had problems with people letting their dogs poop in my yard. What I started doing was scooping up the poop and putting it on the sidewalk. Interestingly, this seems to work.
I confronted one woman whose dog was pooping in my yard when I got home a few years ago. She came back and keyed my S2000. Of course the police did nothing.
two options:
a.) you confront them when you witness them doing it b.) nothing
The fines should be proportionate to income to pay for the program but this would work https://time.com/4552903/mislata-spain-dog-feces/
it should be for all crimes
It is in most places I think ?)
At least every country I lived so far (not that I’m a vagrant criminal lol)
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.
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.
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 that permanent.)
And today there is a discussion and petition to end the Sanchez slow streets because they are “dangerous” to children and bikers due to cross-traffic and somehow “driving down property costs.”
I suppose all of that can be found on whatever social media site you choose - Twitter, Facebook, etc. But it seems extra pervasive on NextDoor, and I think the internet would be a little better off without the platform as a whole.
This is contrary to my Nextdoor experience in middle America suburbs. Most of the posting is fairly benign posting of lost/found dogs or cats, craigslist like sales, asking for HVAC/contracting referrals, or suggesting people support certain small businesses during COVID.
The other day an elderly couple put up a post asking for help removing snow and ice from their sidewalk/driveway because they are disabled. About a half dozen people showed up to help them including a plow driver which I thought was very nice.
I don't go there expecting deep or thought provoking content but it's nice to see if neighbors can help each other or understanding what the general consensus of your area is.
This is my experience (greater Raleigh, NC). It's people asking for referrals for painters or experiences with various Internet service providers. Or lost dogs; so many lost/found dogs.
I see dozens of people losing their dog/cat every day in my small pop area. How are so many people losing track of their pets? just an aside...
Out of curiosity, are these neighborhoods mostly one race and one socioeconomic class?
It seems like racism and classicism are the biggest issues.
Sure those could certainly be exacerbating factors. I'm a pretty private person so I'll just say the area is majority white and and a high median income area.
I guess my question is how do you weigh good outcome areas generating positive outcomes from using the platform vs. lower performing outcome areas generating negative outcomes (e.g. mentally-challenged skateboarder) in their area.
The platform isn't generating the content of the area. The content is just a reflection of the users in the geographical area.
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
Nextdoor needs to do a better job of monitoring their moderators.
Okay so if Nextdoor serves content to local communities which have cultural norms varying from the bay area to so called fly over states how should they monitor their moderators?
If this is such an issue for you please describe how you think a platform which you describe as "fine." should moderate posts across a country as diverse as the US?
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.
It feels like NextDoor is late to the moderation party. As Facebook and Twitter are finding themselves somewhat responsible for what users spew, NextDoor will see the actions like those called out by the top commenter happen much quicker.
Someone might have feet ashamed to type up stuff that you don't really say and send it to the local paper, when you meet someone working there at church every Sunday. But everyone knows that Facebook moderation is outsourced to the Philippines, so it doesn't matter what you say, and if you use thr right whistle-words it might just slip past the <insert ethnic slur> in a faraway low-wage country.
So I find NextDoor to simply have a different culture. If they saw the comments on Hacker News or Reddit, they would probably similarly call it toxic and that its users assumes the worst of others. When I read NextDoor posts, I put on my NextDoor glasses, and when I read Hacker News posts, I put on Hacker News glasses.
They have a different set of values, and are offended by different things. Calling out a person they find suspicious (who ends up not being suspicious) would get some eyerolling but not considered deeply offensive there, the same way that some antisocial behaviors here are not immediately banworthy.
San Francisco NextDoor is a mad house and should be nuked from orbit.
It is a mixture of excessive empathy resulting in half measures that just enable destructive behaviors, and on the other side is those trying to start a pogrom against the visibly unhoused and mentally challenged!
There’s nothing in between!
Try to point out something from how any other city creates a functioning society and you’ll get reported, your post censored in that process, and booted off the platform! I don't have any suggestions for that city, in case you were looking for one to determine if I was someone you wanted to listen to or invalidate.
That place is Detroit West get out if you can. They always wanted you to leave, and artists will be able to afford it again just like they wished! Detroit has artists too.
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.
Is this an attribute of the platform or an attribute of neighbourhoods without community?
The nastiness is an attribute of the neighborhood, amplified by the platform.
These platforms amplify things way too much. Before you would have simply complained to your family and friends but now you can start a suburb wide witch hunt on someone trivially.
My first interaction with Next-door in Cupertino:
Neighbor: "There is a suspicious man walking around the neighborhood!!" (includes blurry picture)
Me: "What makes his suspicious?"
N: "He's black and wearing a hoodie! We don't have people like that around here"
M: "Being black doesn't make him suspicious. Would you say a white man in a hoodie is suspicious? Because we don't have a lot of those around here either"
Then I muted the thread.
Where my family lives, the newspaper there has a two page column with a catchy name, and it's simply daily complaints from residents about EVERYTHING. As a "treat" my family will cut out some of the most wild one's and mail them to me to remind me of what i'm missing.
It's not as clearly racist as much of nextdoor tends to be, but it's everything from "why are the christmas lights up already", to "if they build a hooters drunks will crash their car into my house", and "vote no to the bus route expansion, we have enough traffic"
I miss the weekly police logs in the local paper.... so and so arrested Saturday night for drunken disorderly conduct. Fun stuff to peruse.
NextDoor seems to be an ineffective method of community pressure for incarceration.
The driver suspected of killing a pedestrian after causing an eight-car collision while intoxicated in S.F. on Thursday was facing charges in another DUI case. He was arrested at least seven times in the Bay Area since being released from prison in April.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Suspect-in-fatal-S...
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.
Nextdoor is a cesspool of NIMBYs.
Is this the same guy that I regularly see skating down Stevens Creek Blvd with headphones on while shouting random stuff while ignoring pretty much every traffic law? Cuz I definitely don't feel safe around people that unpredictable.
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.
If anything it should enable a better small town paper if there is sufficient "throughput". I know in city neighborhoods the volume is ridiculous for a casual user, but for a "neighborhood newspaper" it should be a goldmine for content, leads, perspective, gossip, and things that would make a weekly newspaper a fun read.
The problem seems to be that the writers and editors are all volunteers and that will necessarily mean a great variation in quality on both jobs. On top of this, their comment system seems stuck in "sort by controversial".
There is a lot of work that needs to be done - moderating, getting good data, presenting information well. That doesn't jibe with people doing it for free. At least on YouTube or Instagram you could personally strike it rich off being a successful enough contributor.
Is there a way to get good users paid from this? Can you tip moderators? Would people? Maybe, as the newspapers used to do, a subscription fee could be added once a certain growth point was reached. X dollars a month per user, some percentage goes to mods, some percentage goes to people whose comments you liked, some percentage goes to keeping the servers running.
Originally, our Nextdoor "group" was maybe 75 nearby neighbors, 50% of which I knew. Low traffic, high quality. (No ads)
Later they opened things up to maybe 5000 "nearby" neighbors, 1% of which I know. That totally changed the dynamic.
And yes, a few dozen who dominate every discussion. No thanks.
I wonder if the problem is just size?
I split time between two places - one in Brooklyn and the other in a small coastal New Jersey town of 4000 (Atlantic Highlands).
I never bothered using Nextdoor in Brooklyn or Manhattan but I’ve found it pleasant and useful for things like plumber and handyman recommendations, awareness about what’s going on with large noises (naval exercises / dredging) etc. etc.
It’s definitely moderated heavily and I’ve seen political posts removed which I’m fine with - just not what I’m looking for out of it. But it has been generally pleasant enough that I find myself actually reading the email digests and interacting.
By contrast I’ve deleted and disabled Instagram and Facebook and am trying to wean myself off of ever looking for content on Twitter even though I’m purely readonly there.
Given that independent local newspapers are in decline because of Craigslist, FB, ND, and other social media, what could be a good outcome?
Does ND acquire Patch/Hoodline for quality content? This would only work in metro areas they cover.
Or perhaps ND partners with local newspapers and pays them for content? This is more difficult to scale but offers a lifeline to local newspapers who’d otherwise continue to decline in the digital era.
I lament concentration of media, but one can’t deny there are economies of scale in digital media and algorithmic advertising on a national level. It has largely come to pass already in local TV news with Sinclair Broadcasting. I don’t know how these trends can be reversed.
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.
I like the idea of Nextdoor, but everyone (seriously, everyone) in my small town in convinced that it's a scam. There was an article going around a few years back about scammers running their scams on nextdoor, and now they all believe that it's a scam so they stay on facebook in their groups.
Of course, this is not ideal. There is a big difference between journalism and message boards -- though that isn't to say, of course, that there can't room for both.
We've been working on a platform reimagining how local news can operate -- taking whats good from social media (the format and distribution), but maintaining journalistic rigor.
We cannot lose journalism.
https://blog.nillium.com/defending-journalism-to-defend-the-...
Forgive my ignorance but who uses something like Nextdoor? Is it used mainly in suburban communities? I could never imagine anyone using it in any of the urban centres I have lived in.
In SF, most neighborhoods are very active. It may be because SF is where ND started, but I think ~60% of the residents had accounts as recently as a year ago.
That's quite surprising. I would have thought the utility decreases as population density increases.
Middle aged people in suburbia.
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.
Nextdoor is a walled garden. I can pick up a small-town paper, often for free even and read to my delight. No one has to know who I am and I don't have to be a part of the neighborhood.
I think the inclusive nature of Nextdoor is a net negative and both perpetuates fear having to do with home owners' security and separates the in-crowd from others in the neighborhood.
Interestingly, I see local journalists occasionally reaching out to people who have posted on ND and writing articles based on what they have posted. It's not the most common thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if local journalists watched ND for trends/topics to cover.
I found it very useful to get community information and general help when I first moved in.
I don't know how big it is, but at least for us, Patch has replaced our local small-town paper a lot better than Nextdoor ever did. Actually get news about our city that way.
That being said, the comments section on Patch is borderline QAnon with conspiracy theories and tends to be extremely hateful of the local/state government, but the actual articles are solid and useful.
Great, now they can go full google and manipulate the local news.
Nextdoor feed right now, first four in chronological order: * Covid vaccine -- Does anyone know where 65 year olds can get a Covid-19 vaccine? * Local PD Community Relations Post -- Sexual Assault Arrest on Saturday ... * Picture of Dog, Anyone missing a small black dog on Redacted st. * Temporary fix - This is for the jerk in the redacted-car-description and anyone else that wants to proceed to reach at least 80 mph on redacted st. WARNING I WILL BE LAYING STRIPS FOR YALLS TIRES.
> Covid vaccine -- Does anyone know where 65 year olds can get a Covid-19 vaccine
Hmm, NextDoor does have an older demographic. Maybe the organizations doing vaccine clinics should be on NextDoor. Some of the struggles I've heard about older folks struggling with apps and shitty websites suggest that the information needs to go where the audience already is, instead of trying to bring an audience to somewhere new.
Nextdoor is horrible - rumors, low-quality posts, endless discussions of petty things. I deleted my account.
> quietly replacing
What is quiet about it? This adjective is abused, especially in headlines. It’s a trigger for me.
NEXTDOOR IS AWESOME WE HAVE SOME NEIGHBOURS IN RURAL COLORADO THAT MOVED FROM NEW YORK OR SOMEWHERE LIKE THAT AND THEY COMPLAINED ABOUT THE ANIMALS IT WAS LIKE LIVING IN A ZOO THEY SAID OTHER NEIGHBOURS SAIDTHEY COULD MOVE BACKJ TO NEW YORK IF THEY DIDNT LIKE ANIMALS AND THEY SAID SORRY AND THEY DIDNT KNOW ANIMALS LIVED IN THEMONTAINS AND THEY GOT A CAMERA AND EVERYTHING WAS OK
Only slightly paraphrased but gave up on it after that.
The site runs like junk and the people on it are even worse.