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Over here in India, we have solved this issue with WhatsApp groups.

Does that mean you'd need to have their phone number first, like everyone would need to be a WhatsApp contact?

I guess my approach is aimed more toward casual acquaintances, where you might not know the people on your street very well at all, let alone have their phone number. (but I might be misunderstanding how whatsapp groups work).

for my neighbourhood in Poland Facebook group does that. In USA don't you have nextdoor for this?

That's almost similar to what I'm aiming for. But it (nextdoor) seem very keen to validate an exact person's house address. Not sure how I feel about that. I started signing up and kind of got turned off by the house address confirmation stuff.

Guess it's double-edged though, if you don't confirm a person's exact residence then anyone could read the locality's discussions ... tricky.

Is there something inherently wrong with a random person signing up to a particular neighbourhood's group chat? These aren't exactly going to be super-private conversations if they're with everyone on your street ... and I want to encourage community building ... not necessarily GATED-community building. The end goal is world harmony, not several billion factions.

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