To be fair, at least in the Southeastern US, NextDoor is more...RacistDoor.
I've seen people ask the best way to report black people to the cops so they'll be kept from driving through "our safe neighborhood." It's so full of dog whistles my neighbors dogs bark when I open the app.
The only reason NextDoor is freaking out is because they know there's enough of that sort of material to really cause a mass exodus if it ever escaped the neighborhoods it's posted in.
That said...it's...a weird issue, to be sure. NextDoor tried to encourage an expectation of privacy but like...who actually expects that? Really. Anyone with a credit card matching the address they key in can get in. It's not the post card only thing any more.
I could easily change my billing address on my credit card, sign up for some neighborhood on the west coast, and then change my CC address back. Done.
NextDoor has done nothing to actually secure the neighborhood, so it's not like it means anything to say this to the customers. If anything, the neighborhood members could possibly sue NextDoor for overstating the privacy of their posts.
I guess the conclusion is: I'm not just throwing my hands up and saying, "Oh well it's online no privacy!" I'm more saying this is probably the absolute worst hill to choose to fight that battle on.
Wow, so many people all over the US with basically the same experience. For those interested in the history of this phenomenon, I strongly recommend the book "Sundown Towns":
My hazy understanding of American racism, which I now know to be wrong, was that it's always been getting better. Sure, slavery, but then the Civil War and an upward climb from there to the Civil Rights era and beyond. Except for the South, I thought.
It turns out the US had period after Reconstruction, know as the Nadir [1], when anti-black sentiment and action grew significantly. A wave of ethnic cleansing circa 1890-1920 led to a lot of all-white towns all over the country, ones where non-whites weren't allowed after dark. (Thus the title of the book.)
Chapter 11, "The Effect of Sundown Towns on Whites", talks a lot about how growing up in white-only areas leads white people to have enormously distorted perceptions of the dangers of black people. After reading that chapter, the RacistDoor phenomenon made a lot more sense to me.
This is a most excellent book about Reconstruction from firsthand accounts. This country would have been a far different place if the federal government had seen its responsibility through.
It's hard to say if the civil war was even an upward climb. I've been reading a lot of Ta-Neshi Coates recently and he has opened my eyes. The civil war was started by the south in order to allow them to continue exploiting the labour of slaves. It seems those grievances haven't died.
Racism and, more importantly, white supremacy is an all-American concept which seems to be inextricably woven through the whole society.
I hear about racist behavior in NextDoor Seattle as well. The Stranger (local alt weekly publication) has covered it at least once before, as have some other publications. From what I gather, the situation is a microcosm of what we see on a national scale: people who live in neighborhoods with low racial diversity are irrationally afraid of people of color, and NextDoor is their platform of choice. If you don't live in Capitol Hill or Pioneer Square (which face issues of rapid gentrification and homelessness), the local crime stats show that you are vanishingly unlikely to be facing even property crime. Now I really wonder what NextDoor looks like in my (predominantly black, including African immigrants) neighborhood...
I'm sure The Stranger will have a field day if anyone actually gets kicked off because of this "don't share with the media" position. And if NextDoor think that media folks aren't already embedded, in every neighborhood group, so they can have access to the kinda-racist goings-on of the platform, they are surely mistaken!
> If you don't live in Capitol Hill or Pioneer Square (which face
> issues of rapid gentrification and homelessness), the
> local crime stats show that you are vanishingly
> unlikely to be facing even property crime.
Do you really believe this? I live in Ballard, and the rate of property crime has been rapidly rising over the past five years. It's hard to get good statistics because little of it is reported because the police simply don't do anything about it.
In the past five years:
- The strap was cut and a gas can was stolen out of the back of my truck, a week after I got it.
- A chair was stolen from our front porch.
- My wife's car was broken into and her ancient iPod stolen.
- Someone climbed our fence and was wandering around in our backyard before a neighbor scared them off.
We would have certainly had lots of packages stolen too, but we simply don't ship things to our house unless we know we will be home. In addition to those direct crimes against us, we've experienced fun things like:
- Countless RVs illegally parked all around the neighborhood.
- People leaving literal piles of trash behind when they relocate their RV
- People dumping their sewage waste on the road when they relocate their RV.
- RVs catching on fire.
- Someone shitting on the street.
- Another person shitting in our alley.
- A neighbor found a gun in their bushes.
- Needles left on the ground in our yard. (We taught the kids not to touch them.)
- Screaming fights in the middle of the night.
- Homeless people using the port-o-potty painters placed in our front yard. (We put a lock on it after that.)
Seattle has a very serious homeless/drug addict problem and it affects virtually every neighborhood. None of this has anything to do with race, of course, but property crime and the other knock-on effects caused by a large homeless heroin/meth addict population are rampant.
We saw something similar to this sin the brexit referendum areas with very little little migration and who also benefited from EU subsidies vote for brexit because of the dog whistles of the leave campaign.
Don’t even get me started on NextDoor, Seattle, Capitol Hill, and homelessness. Also, don’t forget that a lot of people from the stranger and CHS are Capitol Hill residents and undoubtedly see this content just by virtue of being our neighbors!
>>If you don't live in Capitol Hill or Pioneer Square (which face issues of rapid gentrification and homelessness), the local crime stats show that you are vanishingly unlikely to be facing even property crime. Now I really wonder what NextDoor looks like in my (predominantly black, including African immigrants) neighborhood...
This makes it sound like we live in the same area (Rainier Valley). Property crime is definitely a thing here and gun crime has been consistent - though limited - in the Columbia City area.
Pioneer Square is also a different animal since it is highly commercial and not residential.
Regardless, the Rainier Valley has plenty of crime. I've had my car stolen, my car broken into, and a townhome next to mine being burgled in the few years I've been down here.
We are, of course, undergoing rapid gentrification as well.
I live in the heart of silicon valley in a very diverse neighborhood. Indian, Jewish, Persian, Chinese, white, Muslim, ...
I wouldn't call it racism, but it is other-ism, and it comes from all corners. This person doesn't look like he belongs in our neighborhood -- often it's more about social economic / class -- what vehicle they're driving, how they're dressed, are they a race that doesn't typically live in our mostly diverse neighborhood.
We have a lot of burglaries and it just drives up the paranoia.
The amount of property crime in at least some parts of SV is pretty ridiculous. My most recent bike was stolen within a month of buying it, to replace another bike that lasted 3 months before being stolen. That was bought to replace a total beater, torture to ride, flat tires, etc. Also stolen, though I can't imagine why. Next Door is also full of posts about broken car windows and stuff stolen from the back seats. So it's understandable that people get a bit antsy about people that they doubt are locals.
I haven't noticed overt racism on ND as much as crotchetiness, though. A lot of complaints about the local ice cream truck, for example, and about the number of camper vans parked along certain roads that people are using as housing.
>often it's more about social economic / class -- what vehicle they're driving, how they're dressed, are they a race that doesn't typically live in our mostly diverse neighborhood.
I find that interesting, because I live in South Texas and I don't really see any racist posts in my neighborhood. Mostly it's just people complaining about people's car alarms going off at night and reporting when package thefts occur. It's pretty low traffic, in general, honestly. I maybe look at it once a month and review all the prior threads for the month.
Same experience here, also in Texas. Nothing racist at all, just dog-got-out and other harmless posts of the like. Occasional political chatter, but not unreasonable.
I'm not sure why that deserves a "to be fair." I see blatant racism in my Nextdoor in DC too. There's a problem here, but it's not caused by reporters.
I see quite of it here in Portland, Oregon as well. Certianly more “those people” are a problem posts than I would expect. There is definitely a lot more ire directed at the homeless, but the (apparent) insularity of NextDoor appears to encourage people to show their true colors.
I live in Seattle, and I can tell you from the few times I've been on NextDoor, even in a blue city like ours, I was surprised at how racist people still are, albeit subtly.
It is mostly a story perpetuated in the press that racism is a Southern thing. Similar to how stories of dog fighting were the South. It is one part stereotype and one part comfort, comfort in the idea that where you live; outside of the South; possibly cannot have similar issues.
Tacoma here. I kept getting hand typed notes in my mailbox for a few months to join NextDoor. Looked it up once and never went back. Too many dogwhistle posts about "undesirable youth" causing all the city's problems.
There is far more racism in Seattle than southern cities and Midwestern cities that I've lived in. I perhaps have a different perspective on it since I am a POC, but that is certainly my feeling on it all.
Yeah, there's a lot of subtle racism. But there's also some pretty overt stuff. Look no further than our local conversations about homelessness and housing affordability, right?
No need to change any addresses either. Just pick up one of those visa or Amex gift cards. They let you put anything you’d like in the name and address fields when you’re completing a purchase.
I assume NextDoor is doing an AVS check and expecting a match.
The cards you mention fail AVS checks, but with a 'U' code for 'UNAVAILABLE'. Many online sellers will let those sales through. NextDoor likely does not.
I have not noticed any racist stuff on nextdoor, I think the leads in the groups I have participated in would remove these kinds of messages and their participants.
I have been/am involved in three communities, all in the southeast:
1. An upper class neighborhood in a city where whites are a (slim) minority
2. A working class neighborhood in the same city where I seemed to be the only white guy
3. A rural neighborhood where almost everyone is white
I am surprised that people would write such things today, when the perils of doing so with your own name are widely understood.
This is sad to hear but not suprising given my experience reading online local news comments. I live in Mount Airy Philly, a racially mixed and very liberal neighborhood. On my NextDoor racial descriptions usually have to be solicited. It seems that my neighbors are very sensitive to profiling, or at least to being perceived as someone who profiles and I've seen Caucasian members "check" other Caucasian members for leading down that path. That being said the "suspect" is often times AA, but the complaints are always legitimate so as a AA I'm rarely offended.
Most “neighborhood” forums have a ton of racism. Try the City-Data forums for Baltimore, or DC Urban Moms. The threads about, say, the racial demographics of the elementary school in some genitrifting neighborhood can get pretty awful.
There's a simmering issue underlying this that in only a matter of time will surface in a court battle: if racist attitudes are common in the general population, does making a story out of it (presuming there is no related court filing about illegal discrimination or anything similar) violate a person's "non-notability" status?
I like the app for the classifieds, and event posts and updates directly from the city and police department. However there are a lot of older generation posters that complain about everything and anything. Lately in my neighborhood the older generation have been outraged about the new recycling bins and rules. How dare they expect us to sort our own garbage! Actually they are outraged about any change...
They need to own up to the fact it is community they have the power to manage. If they want to govern through censorship then they're going to bother a significant amount of people and turn off another portion who don't see them properly supporting and facilitating a safe online space.
It’s true that making decisions based on statistical risk is different from people acting out of hate. Indeed, it can be seductive to people with a basic understandinge of math that data driven decisions should be more fair minded.
But the devil is in the details. It’s famously easy to make bad decisions based on “flawless” calculations that simply don’t interpret data right or don’t take all factors into consideration. Statistics is known for this peril even in mundane business situations, but with problems that are controversial, and affect people’s lives, it’s even more perilous.
Here basic profiling would tell me you are male, correct? Did you know people like you commit 99% of murder and violent crime? Can you really blame me for crossing to the other side of the street if I see you walking toward me at night?
I wonder if they could lean into that and show people a different way. The last time this came up they had some tools for helping people recognize they were being racist and think about it.
To me it sounds like an old story; content host doesn't want the obligation to moderate & review the vast quantities of content posted to their site. If the content never makes it to reporters, nobody will be plastering their name on the front of the paper demanding NextDoor hire an army of content moderators.
Interesting. I am a NextDoor Lead and recently had a user throw a fit over another user who had committed the unforgivable sin of correcting his grammar. He was demanding he be banned.
I told him essentially he needed to calm down and avoid conflict (this user is always getting into fights) in addition to that it wasn't in my power as lead to ban people. He said I was being "very unprofessional" and threatened to go to the local newspaper about how we weren't taking his reports seriously - as if they'd care. I explained that I don't work for NextDoor, I'm just one of his neighbors with slightly more power than him.
He told me to "never contact him again" lol. OK. Good deal.
Anyway, I thought that struck kind of close to this.
They are ban happy there! I got banned for calling someone a NIMBY because they were protesting a stop sign at an intersection two separate pedestrians got hit at because "it fostered increased traffic and urbanization."
I've never seen anyone banned for mild name calling, but it's certainly against the rules and would get the comment removed. I suspect you had other reports in your history.
This is timely for our community in Topanga, CA (between Malibu and Santa Monica). We've got an ongoing issue with an Internet provider where about 10% of packets are dropped. Nextdoor became a rallying point for hundreds of customers who have been dealing with 'slow web pages' for months. Nextdoor is at its best in these moments!
But, we need to be sharing what people are saying with the press as one of our next steps. I noticed this problem with ND so we started blogging about the issues separately and quoting folks without identifying details in Medium, so that the press could quote Medium instead of Nextdoor. (edit: https://twitter.com/topangafrontier is the best summary link)
I know in practice, Nextdoor is kind of a hangout for the worst types of HOA/worry-wort/NIMBY type. But, I kinda get this. The whole point of Nextdoor is privacy. Like, there's a type of socialization that only works based on geography (i.e. - my neighbors get to know my address, my comings and goings, my possessions - stuff that should not be shared widely). If the privacy thing is blown up, then there goes the last actual "social" network.
Also, what kind of journalist is going through Nextdoor looking for stories? That's like the laziest, most pedantic muckraking possible. Can you find no one to get a quote from?
I kinda get it too, but at the end of the day there's no way for Nextdoor to effectively enforce the rule, and there's no reason for a journalist (not party to any agreement) to ignore what is sent to them. The rule may as well not exist. And if the rule is absolutely necessary, then Nextdoor should not exist.
> Like, there's a type of socialization that only works based on geography
There are also local newspapers. I do understand Nextdoor's motivation here, but it does seem a little odd. Journalists typically get stories by talking to people, and local journalists by talking to local people. Nextdoor is a specific avenue to do exactly that. And half the complaints on Nextdoor are things the author would probably love to have featured in the news (though hopefully they won't be, no-one needs to encourage the NIMBYs), and might be ones that would benefit from a reporter investigating them.
Except the same people that fret about privacy post sensitive information about their neighbors at the drop of a hat. These people have no clue about the ramifications of their actions.
Yeah, on the one hand anything you write, say, or do in public (or even a semi-public forum or a broad company mailing list) is subject to posting on news sites, YouTube, blogs, etc. No privacy. Get over it.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that it's actually a good thing to just throw up our hands and say that there's simply no such thing as expectation of privacy and, if it's that important to you, just keep your mouth shut.
If you want privacy, I guess you have to do it the old-fashioned personal meeting way. No recording devices. Deniability if that's necessary. Snapchat has the silly "this message will self-destruct", but someone can still point a camera at their phone to record it.
> Nextdoor is kind of a hangout for the worst types of HOA/worry-wort/NIMBY type
That might have something to do with where you live. In our neighborhood, it's more of a status report on various happenings like crime, city projects, etc. Here's an example from today: someone posted they were putting a 9' x 6' Persian Rug on the curb, free for the taking.
>The whole point of Nextdoor is privacy. Like, there's a type of socialization that only works based on geography (i.e. - my neighbors get to know my address, my comings and goings, my possessions - stuff that should not be shared widely).
What makes Nextdoor special over something like Facebook? Especially when you consider the origins of Facebook (school networks, etc).
The Internet is a public network. Regardless of any particular site's PR or stated purpose, people need to learn that anything you post to the Internet is public because it's effectively public. The site may say it's private, have terms and conditions that try to pretend it's private, or it might have "privacy controls" that let you/them try to gate access to the content. But once it's posted, the cat is out of the bag, and the content is one scraper or security breach away from being public. Treat it as such.
I would take it even further: "Digital is Forever" [1]. Just look at the Dolphins coach who thought he was sending a private video to someone. AFAIK he wasn't outed by a scraper or breach, rather it was the intended recipient who published his video.
> people need to learn that anything you post to the Internet is public because it's effectively public
Private silos exist, but people need to learn that they come down to trust and that this circle of trust is much wider than the realize. Even if you know and trust every single person in a group to not share information, do you trust fiends and family that might share the computer, from the creepy uncle to the twelve year old cousin? Do you trust that the can secure their own home network? Do you trust that they won't connect their device to a wifi honey pot? IME most people overestimate the amount of people they can trust, underestimate the amount of people they need to trust and are oblivious to the fact that once something has breached this trust circle it's breached for good.
Data can be replicated infinitely, for zero cost, with no notice to it's creator. The only effective way to protect data against universal distribution is to keep it on your machine (and keep that machine secure).
With Gmail, big G has everything. More relevant to the grandparent, the recipients of your mail have everything you send them. They can forward it anywhere and there's nothing you can do about it.
Not everything should be globalised and ripped apart from any private context. Frankly this is a lesson we collectively need to learn IMO.
I get that nothing can anymore completely accomplish a total sort of privacy or other perfect reduction of scope, but that as a theme does have value IMO.
I think the global reach is the problem here: kind of like how phonebooks, public records intended for the interest of the local population get scraped and sold to ad businesses and credit bureaus.
I'm pretty sure that some of the content posted to Nextdoor could be of public interest, and it would make sense that a local newspaper or TV station may wish to report on it, just as they may report on the minutes of city council meetings or organized events.
I think the issue here is when you combine a local newspaper with the global reach of the Internet, and something that was meant for a small audience is now being shared way outside of its original target audience. I sure hope people don't go posting the minutia of my local neighborhood to BuzzFeed or reddit.
Regardless, this is just for show. This sort of policy isn't going to make any difference. We've seen these sorts of scraping issues in the past with other walled gardens: site owners make a big deal about scraping, shut down their APIs, etc. It hasn't stopped content from being scraped and reported on. Reporters will continue to report; users will continue to make anonymous story tips; and new accounts will sign up after old accounts get locked out.
I lived in a Utah city with one of the highest concentrations of Mormons and on the whole people were incredibly gracious. Surely not all experiences are equal, but for over three years my wife and I were made to feel welcome in the community.
There were little inconveniences like no coffee provided at a lot of workplaces and liquor restrictions, but if you love outdoor stuff that alone can make it a pretty nice place to live.
It is ridiculous that they are doubling down on their "private social network" nonsense rather than admitting to users that whatever they post there is ALWAYS going to be public.
Agreed, that's stupid. That's not how digital content works. The only thing that works is anonymity, which social networks of our age have forbidden on principle.
That, along with maybe bot-generated fake posts to add deniability.
People regularly leak what happens inside companies, where people have signed secrecy agreements and face repercussions far more serious than losing account access to a social network.
Readit News
I've seen people ask the best way to report black people to the cops so they'll be kept from driving through "our safe neighborhood." It's so full of dog whistles my neighbors dogs bark when I open the app.
The only reason NextDoor is freaking out is because they know there's enough of that sort of material to really cause a mass exodus if it ever escaped the neighborhoods it's posted in.
That said...it's...a weird issue, to be sure. NextDoor tried to encourage an expectation of privacy but like...who actually expects that? Really. Anyone with a credit card matching the address they key in can get in. It's not the post card only thing any more.
I could easily change my billing address on my credit card, sign up for some neighborhood on the west coast, and then change my CC address back. Done.
NextDoor has done nothing to actually secure the neighborhood, so it's not like it means anything to say this to the customers. If anything, the neighborhood members could possibly sue NextDoor for overstating the privacy of their posts.
I guess the conclusion is: I'm not just throwing my hands up and saying, "Oh well it's online no privacy!" I'm more saying this is probably the absolute worst hill to choose to fight that battle on.
https://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-Americ...
My hazy understanding of American racism, which I now know to be wrong, was that it's always been getting better. Sure, slavery, but then the Civil War and an upward climb from there to the Civil Rights era and beyond. Except for the South, I thought.
It turns out the US had period after Reconstruction, know as the Nadir [1], when anti-black sentiment and action grew significantly. A wave of ethnic cleansing circa 1890-1920 led to a lot of all-white towns all over the country, ones where non-whites weren't allowed after dark. (Thus the title of the book.)
Chapter 11, "The Effect of Sundown Towns on Whites", talks a lot about how growing up in white-only areas leads white people to have enormously distorted perceptions of the dangers of black people. After reading that chapter, the RacistDoor phenomenon made a lot more sense to me.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=the...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1886754.The_Trouble_They...
Racism and, more importantly, white supremacy is an all-American concept which seems to be inextricably woven through the whole society.
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/537909/ - highly recommend this.
I'm sure The Stranger will have a field day if anyone actually gets kicked off because of this "don't share with the media" position. And if NextDoor think that media folks aren't already embedded, in every neighborhood group, so they can have access to the kinda-racist goings-on of the platform, they are surely mistaken!
In the past five years:
- The strap was cut and a gas can was stolen out of the back of my truck, a week after I got it.
- A chair was stolen from our front porch.
- My wife's car was broken into and her ancient iPod stolen.
- Someone climbed our fence and was wandering around in our backyard before a neighbor scared them off.
We would have certainly had lots of packages stolen too, but we simply don't ship things to our house unless we know we will be home. In addition to those direct crimes against us, we've experienced fun things like:
- Countless RVs illegally parked all around the neighborhood.
- People leaving literal piles of trash behind when they relocate their RV
- People dumping their sewage waste on the road when they relocate their RV.
- RVs catching on fire.
- Someone shitting on the street.
- Another person shitting in our alley.
- A neighbor found a gun in their bushes.
- Needles left on the ground in our yard. (We taught the kids not to touch them.)
- Screaming fights in the middle of the night.
- Homeless people using the port-o-potty painters placed in our front yard. (We put a lock on it after that.)
Seattle has a very serious homeless/drug addict problem and it affects virtually every neighborhood. None of this has anything to do with race, of course, but property crime and the other knock-on effects caused by a large homeless heroin/meth addict population are rampant.
This makes it sound like we live in the same area (Rainier Valley). Property crime is definitely a thing here and gun crime has been consistent - though limited - in the Columbia City area.
Pioneer Square is also a different animal since it is highly commercial and not residential.
Regardless, the Rainier Valley has plenty of crime. I've had my car stolen, my car broken into, and a townhome next to mine being burgled in the few years I've been down here.
We are, of course, undergoing rapid gentrification as well.
Dead Comment
I wouldn't call it racism, but it is other-ism, and it comes from all corners. This person doesn't look like he belongs in our neighborhood -- often it's more about social economic / class -- what vehicle they're driving, how they're dressed, are they a race that doesn't typically live in our mostly diverse neighborhood.
We have a lot of burglaries and it just drives up the paranoia.
I haven't noticed overt racism on ND as much as crotchetiness, though. A lot of complaints about the local ice cream truck, for example, and about the number of camper vans parked along certain roads that people are using as housing.
This. They hate "poor white trash" just as much.
The cards you mention fail AVS checks, but with a 'U' code for 'UNAVAILABLE'. Many online sellers will let those sales through. NextDoor likely does not.
You can see some of the possible AVS responses here: https://www.chasepaymentech.com/address_verification_service...
Man, I guess I am not the only one who noticed this. And I live in Sacramento, CA. I am guessing its 10x worse else where.
Are you speaking up when you see these examples of racism?
(Seriously with the downvotes?)
I have been/am involved in three communities, all in the southeast: 1. An upper class neighborhood in a city where whites are a (slim) minority 2. A working class neighborhood in the same city where I seemed to be the only white guy 3. A rural neighborhood where almost everyone is white
I am surprised that people would write such things today, when the perils of doing so with your own name are widely understood.
https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/racial-profiling-via-...
I thought it was its own category because it's not a form of prejudice, but instead refers to the use of race based statistical reasoning.
I'd rather we keep the line drawn. and not muddy the racist card.
e.g. RacialProfilistDoor is more apt
But the devil is in the details. It’s famously easy to make bad decisions based on “flawless” calculations that simply don’t interpret data right or don’t take all factors into consideration. Statistics is known for this peril even in mundane business situations, but with problems that are controversial, and affect people’s lives, it’s even more perilous.
Here basic profiling would tell me you are male, correct? Did you know people like you commit 99% of murder and violent crime? Can you really blame me for crossing to the other side of the street if I see you walking toward me at night?
Because if not, this sounds like a fancy way to dress up racial prejudice.
There isn't a universal definition of racism, but racial profiling is certainly a historical tool of racists and racist policies.
http://www.wordnik.com/words/racism
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
I told him essentially he needed to calm down and avoid conflict (this user is always getting into fights) in addition to that it wasn't in my power as lead to ban people. He said I was being "very unprofessional" and threatened to go to the local newspaper about how we weren't taking his reports seriously - as if they'd care. I explained that I don't work for NextDoor, I'm just one of his neighbors with slightly more power than him.
He told me to "never contact him again" lol. OK. Good deal.
Anyway, I thought that struck kind of close to this.
They are ban happy there! I got banned for calling someone a NIMBY because they were protesting a stop sign at an intersection two separate pedestrians got hit at because "it fostered increased traffic and urbanization."
fwiw you can still see the house from satellite / 3d
But, we need to be sharing what people are saying with the press as one of our next steps. I noticed this problem with ND so we started blogging about the issues separately and quoting folks without identifying details in Medium, so that the press could quote Medium instead of Nextdoor. (edit: https://twitter.com/topangafrontier is the best summary link)
Also, what kind of journalist is going through Nextdoor looking for stories? That's like the laziest, most pedantic muckraking possible. Can you find no one to get a quote from?
There are also local newspapers. I do understand Nextdoor's motivation here, but it does seem a little odd. Journalists typically get stories by talking to people, and local journalists by talking to local people. Nextdoor is a specific avenue to do exactly that. And half the complaints on Nextdoor are things the author would probably love to have featured in the news (though hopefully they won't be, no-one needs to encourage the NIMBYs), and might be ones that would benefit from a reporter investigating them.
Private for them but everyone else can get rekt.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that it's actually a good thing to just throw up our hands and say that there's simply no such thing as expectation of privacy and, if it's that important to you, just keep your mouth shut.
That might have something to do with where you live. In our neighborhood, it's more of a status report on various happenings like crime, city projects, etc. Here's an example from today: someone posted they were putting a 9' x 6' Persian Rug on the curb, free for the taking.
What makes Nextdoor special over something like Facebook? Especially when you consider the origins of Facebook (school networks, etc).
[1] https://blogs.harvard.edu/infolaw/2006/10/17/digital-is-fore...
Private silos exist, but people need to learn that they come down to trust and that this circle of trust is much wider than the realize. Even if you know and trust every single person in a group to not share information, do you trust fiends and family that might share the computer, from the creepy uncle to the twelve year old cousin? Do you trust that the can secure their own home network? Do you trust that they won't connect their device to a wifi honey pot? IME most people overestimate the amount of people they can trust, underestimate the amount of people they need to trust and are oblivious to the fact that once something has breached this trust circle it's breached for good.
With Gmail, big G has everything. More relevant to the grandparent, the recipients of your mail have everything you send them. They can forward it anywhere and there's nothing you can do about it.
”Dance Like No One is Watching; Email Like It May One Day Be Read Aloud in a Deposition”
You’re taking a serious gamble if you assume your email will be private forever, as certain politicians now know all too well.
Not everything should be globalised and ripped apart from any private context. Frankly this is a lesson we collectively need to learn IMO.
I get that nothing can anymore completely accomplish a total sort of privacy or other perfect reduction of scope, but that as a theme does have value IMO.
I'm pretty sure that some of the content posted to Nextdoor could be of public interest, and it would make sense that a local newspaper or TV station may wish to report on it, just as they may report on the minutes of city council meetings or organized events.
I think the issue here is when you combine a local newspaper with the global reach of the Internet, and something that was meant for a small audience is now being shared way outside of its original target audience. I sure hope people don't go posting the minutia of my local neighborhood to BuzzFeed or reddit.
Regardless, this is just for show. This sort of policy isn't going to make any difference. We've seen these sorts of scraping issues in the past with other walled gardens: site owners make a big deal about scraping, shut down their APIs, etc. It hasn't stopped content from being scraped and reported on. Reporters will continue to report; users will continue to make anonymous story tips; and new accounts will sign up after old accounts get locked out.
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There were little inconveniences like no coffee provided at a lot of workplaces and liquor restrictions, but if you love outdoor stuff that alone can make it a pretty nice place to live.
My complaint wasn't prompted by an uninformed view of fellow Utah residents.
I see lot of troll potential here :)
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That, along with maybe bot-generated fake posts to add deniability.
Nextdoor is fighting a losing battle.