Nextdoor ends its program for forwarding suspicions to police
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
It's too bad, I think idea of organizing a social network based on proximity and centered around community information is a viable idea, It's just that NextDoor is doing that with our worst instincts.
[1] https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2020/06/fa...
[2] https://twitter.com/RandazzoTweets/status/126860852649191014...
> reaction from an entire community, where they end up chasing a Hispanic family out of town
Is a drastic overstatement of what happened.
Or did I miss something? Are there really only four vehicles in the entire community of Forks?
For example, when they were stopped at the store, the family is quoted as saying[1]:
> The family had shopped for camping supplies at Forks Outfitters and were confronted “by seven or eight carloads of people in the grocery store parking lot,” Anderson said they reported to deputies.
No one in the community is willing to come forward with the names of the guilty parties, however many of them were okay with spreading violent rumors about out-of-towners, both of which are levels of complicity in my book.
[1] https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/crime/family-harassed-in-...
I have only seen a little bit of NextDoor, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me to be more of how people are deciding to use the platform as opposed to NextDoor purposely promoting our worst instincts. Do you feel like they really are promoting the most inflammatory posts for the purpose of increasing engagement? (like so many of the other major platforms out there)
For me it is sad to see that there are so many people out there too quick to pass judgement on anyone that looks different in their neighborhood. But so far it feels like another example of how web platforms allow people to be more comfortable in expressing their true feelings, and while often disappointing, is a good reminder of the very different views people around us can hold.
My Nextdoor has none of the things people are complaining about. Here, the worst thing is arguments about whether we are taking COVID seriously enough or not, but I suppose that is a natural consequence of discussing which businesses are closed etc.
I don't think it's necessarily intentional, but posts which foster fear (like "I saw a scary black person walking down the street") will naturally invite more engagement from users, and the site may respond to that by promoting those posts over less controversial content (like "my cat is missing").
On the other hand this is a neighborhood app and is used differently in different neighborhoods. Tenderloin vs Nob Hill.
It is crazy how much everyone assumes all these people are out to get them.
A typical post:
"OMG Who Is This Suspicious Person!!!"
:: watches video, sees rather bored looking person, driving a UPS truck, wearing a UPS uniform, dropping off a package, then leaving ::
This was 90%+ of what the posts were like. The rest were 'political' screeds so disjointed they were essentially logorrhea. Something about how Nextdoor has shaped their posting methodologies has made even Facebook posts look sane in comparison, and that's saying something.
The added frustration is that real neighborhood watch needs exist. We had some professional thieves roll through our cul-de-sac a few days ago- dozens of people had their cars broken in to, and whatever was in easy reach stolen. The Ring Neighborhood system allowed those of us affected to find who had video of what, and forward it all to the police. That's a real benefit. But it has its own issues.
Social media is a hard problem.
Don't get me wrong though. Nextdoor's program to forward suspicions to the police is the wrong play. No one should be arrested and put at harm's way just because someone was a bit anxious one day.
I just think that we should be nurturing a high trust society, rather than moving to a low trust one where, on the surface everyone is tolerant/accepting but in reality they aren't really thinking about the other people in their community at all. "Not my problem." "Oh no, I can't let myself be bigoted. Who am I to judge the masked man walking around with a chainsaw at midnight? He might just be headed out to trim his garden?"
Another problem is that such means of inflicting harm on people exist for Nextdoor and it's users.
"oh wow drug dealers in the best neighborhood in the city I can't believe it, but really, did you test the product for accuracy? let us know!"
NextDoor and Craigslist and Reddit's /r/{city} communities just prove that it may be viable but it's pretty undesirable. I think it's best to not give the most neurotic, ill people of your community the loudest voice, but these social networks also create this neuroticism and illness.
You also create a scenario (NextDoor especially) where all the sane people are driven out by the crazies. Back when NextDoor was new, after a year it would come up in conversation and sure enough, anyone normal would admit they tried it and had to delete it.
Social media is messing us up. I don't think we're missing some new take on it that's going to make it all better. I think the vestigially tribal parts of our brain make it a non-starter. We need to get back to the face-to-face -- it seems to be the only way we keep in mind that there's a human at the other end of the line, not some nebulous automaton that we craft into everything we hate in the world.
People say that it's the outliers but the reality is that in many cases, this is the silent majority driving the behavior.
Frankly I just don't think we can handle social media. We're trying to do this whole technological civilization thing and we've made progress that is absolutely mind bending, but it wasn't long ago that we were using fur and bones and would only meet 100 people our entire life. And our brains are still there mentally, lagging behind the rest of our progress.
I still can’t reconcile just how wildly wrong i was. I didn’t appreciate that it’s not common to want to know truth, common is titillation and tribalism - which always existed anyway, it’s not that the internet increased it or made it more popular, it’s that i was a geek hacking away in my bedroom and didn’t see much of real society.
Although my biggest hangup contrasting then vs now is that Microsoft is my favourite tech company these days.
You weren't wrong. Sharing knowledge freely absolutely solved many of society's problems.
It uh... created a few more too...
Wouldn't be so hard on your past self.
You’ve just described Twitter perfectly.
I agree that the behavior being capitalized on here is pathological but using the terms "neuroticism", "illness", and "crazies" here unfairly and wrongly stigmatizes people with mental illness when in practice people with mental illness are more likely to be harmed by these suspicious posts and behavior nextdoor had been encouraging
This is a fair point, and one I think is very important to consider. When I wrote the original quote, I was not thinking of another facebook, but rather a platform that would work on issues like providing access to local government meetings, and probably be closer to what we now think of as "journalism". Which the lack of is a major problem in many parts of the country due to the declining newspaper industry.
Small towns and rural America is in trouble, and although it's naive to say there are simple solutions, I am optimistic that it is possible for technology to solve some problems.
There is never any conflict that I can tell of and there certainly aren't dubious posts about "suspicious" characters.
Lately some these guys have a post history in /r/Seattle too, talking about CHAZ or whatever.
It's obnoxious, there's enough going on locally in NYC without a bunch of racists jumping in to defend stop and frisk or whatever.
It's not something you see in subreddits for smaller or less popular cities with similar demographics. Subreddits for these tend to be actually useful.
Haven’t seen any suspicious persons type posts, but we did coordinate the entire neighborhood to help the police after people broke into multiple cars in driveways in ours and the adjacent neighborhood.
It’s been mostly good with the occasional spammy business posting.
how did this work?
also sounds like a pretty suburban place maybe?
It’s a neighborhood in a suburb of upstate SC.
Also: I think a lot of people who complain about Nextdoor need to reflect on where they chose to live. My little city in KY was perfectly fine. People offering help, lost/found animals, events...standard stuff.
The oft-repeated quote of "ND is just Tinder for old racists" makes it sound so lovely.
Almost all the fear type nextdoor posts in the areas I've lived in have involved animals and not humans.
Fox, random dog, raccoons and the extremely unlikely but reported none the less....bear sightings.
I am trying to share my observation, and express my disappointment that a company has created a skinner-box engagement loop based on fear and neuroticism. People will always be afraid, but technology should be used to bring out the best qualities in humans, not amplify the worst.
Shameless plug: We are exactly working on this and want to bring better community information app without other distractions. Currently only in Denmark.Will be updating the details soon.
However, I agree that the way NextDoor is handling community interactions is really disturbing.
Of course, if you are witness to a serious crime you should report it. But if someone waters their lawn, sleeps in their car, or pees in their garden then that's their business and usually not yours so as long as you are not inconvenienced you should mind your own business lest one day the tables are turned and you forget to bring in your garbage container. And that's before we get into reporting people 'walking while black', those things might actually be against a law.
If you're breaking N laws per day think about what the effect would be if those were all enforced. Do not do unto others... And don't give racists even more tools for harassment.
- themselves as perfect but making the odd honest mistake every now and then
- others as fundamentally flawed, persistent rule-breakers who Need To Be Punished
Even if they’re broadly the same or worse. This is true on the road, in college or writing code. A lot of people will be unable to look at their own tiny little infractions and see them as equivalent to the flagrant disregard for the rules that they observe in others.
We judge others by their actions. We judge ourselves by our intentions.
When people see others in the neighbourhood that fit a 'pattern they might associate with criminality' this has nothing to do with viewing 'others that need to be punished' rather just a fearful view of difference, and probably lack of exposure to people that creates some low-key bigotry. Throw in some neuroticism and too much free time, possibly some mental health issues and it's a problem.
It's useful for borrowing a car seat, getting recommendations for plumbers, electricians, etc, advertising extra garden produce we wish to give away, and so forth. Otherwise, I stay off of it.
Also from a technical and UI perspective, the web site is atrocious. It loads terribly slowly on a current generation iPad, constantly tries to route you to its app, makes it way too easy to accidentally interact with a post or comment, defaults to "top posts" instead of "recent activity" and on and on. It's barely any better visiting on a desktop.
I much prefer the sub-reddits, city-data forums, and even FB groups for my area for keeping in touch with what's going around me.
Now, maybe I will be downvoted for saying (in this climate), but the ability for people to see something suspicious and do something about it is important. You would have the pendulum swing the other way and have people actively tell themselves to ignore potential crime / bad actors, or be unable to report something legitimate?
But the point is that up to recent years, your interactions with police were not anonymous, and you had to (generally) put your name and reputation (or phone number and your voice) behind things that you asserted were true. There was an element of credibility verification in the reporting.
Today, anonymity on the internet, and the ease of creating false (or biased) reports has unleashed a tidal wave of noise and bad information, with no repercussions (reputation-wise, or cost) to the persons creating it. And the effects are all externalized to those who wrongly come under suspicion.
There are some things that need to have a barrier to being done, and taking it online lowers that barrier. Until we figure out what that caused, and how it's to be handled correctly, it's right that these portals disable the features that are causing us these kinds of societal mistakes -- and we actively should choose to slow down our adoption of things that we don't yet understand the full implications of.
That said, this whole topic brings up the question of "At what cost?" We won't see the macroeffects these have on our communities for quite a while. Our base insticts when it comes to how we should react when we see something off, are slowly changing.
Wow, what a mess! Standard lost dog fare, but also a lot of busybodies nitpicking about neighbors' municipal code violations, suspicions of people who don't look like they "fit" the neighborhood, and general bickering in every comment thread.
NextDoor seems like a good idea, until you execute and it turns out the power users are busybodies holed up at home who have way too much time to micromanage the goings-on in their neighborhoods.
"Fairlanes, Inc. is laying new ones all the time. Have to bulldoze lots of neighborhoods to do it, but those seventies and eighties developments exist to be bulldozed, right? No sidewalks, no schools, no nothing. Don’t have their own police force — no immigration control — undesirables can walk right in without being frisked or even harassed. Now a Burbclave, that’s the place to live. A city-state with its own constitution, a border, laws, cops, everything."
"MetaCops Unlimited is the official peacekeeping force of White Columns, and also of The Mews at Windsor Heights, The Heights at Bear Run, Cinnamon Grove, and The Farms of Cloverdelle. They also enforce traffic regulations on all highways and byways operated by Fairlanes, Inc. ... MetaCops’ main competitor, WorldBeat Security, handles all roads belonging to Cruiseways, plus has worldwide contracts with Dixie Traditionals, Pickett’s Plantation, Rainbow Heights (check it out — two apartheid Burbclaves and one for black suits), Meadowvale on the [insert name of river] and Brickyard Station. WorldBeat is smaller than MetaCops, handles more upscale contracts, supposedly has a bigger espionage arm — though if that’s what people want, they just talk to an account rep at the Central Intelligence Corporation. And then there’s The Enforcers — but they cost a lot and don’t take well to supervision. It is rumored that, under their uniforms, they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick, emblazoned with the words SUE ME. ... These Burbclaves! These city-states! So small, so insecure, that just about everything, like not mowing your lawn, or playing your stereo too loud, becomes a national security issue."
Or maybe people are just people, pleasant and unpleasant and everything else, and it can't really be helped?
It seems like putting something on the front page like "hey don't be a racist busy-body" isn't really enough. And at the other end of the extreme you've got Facebook employing organisations that filter sensitive content - with fairly horrific outcomes for the individuals who do the monitoring.
HackerNews is a pretty good example of getting a certain standard of behaviour out of people en masse. I wonder what the secret sauce was?
Nextdoor is known to be platform that enables bigotry and perpetuates racial stereotypes. Nextdoor, not forwarding bullshit suspicions to the police, is the least they could do since they created the fucking problem to begin with.
It encourages one to view everyone who you don't immediately recognize as an outsider, causing you to fear them, and then share that fear with others so they too can be afraid. It's absolute madness, and I haven't ever heard a good thing in the real world about Nextdoor. I have had people assume my race incorrectly though, and gleefully admit their racist usage of it not knowing what they were about to say would be considered so fucking awful...
Depending on the privacy agreement, would be very intriguing to see neighborhood sentiment analysis... Maybe pick out those racist neighborhoods to avoid (or join? Maybe you are into homogeneity).
The big advertisers have been Ring and security companies, so they tend to attract people worried about other people. They suppress things like political posts, so there really isn’t anything to do but worry about lost cats or busybody crap.
Why is this a problem? Minor offenses are still offenses and they can often be very frustrating and problematic. They still deserve police attention where they constitute a violation of the law. Streamlining the process is a positive not negative, and the framing here just seems like these activist groups don’t want people to be held accountable.
I suggest you show the courage of your convictions, and do a few hour's research on exactly how much is illegal at present.
Then, turn yourself in for only the Federal crimes you've committed in the past year.
We'll never see you again, of course, but it's a small price to pay.
Flash mob style, waiting in line, no! camping out for days waiting in line, not to buy tickets to the next reiteration of $sameoldstorybutwithmorelensflare, but to turn yourself in with video evidence of jaywalking or cycling without a helmet.
His example is something like 'Yes, I came here to apply for a loan of a billion dollars for an ant farm, yes I would like a complimentary coffee.'
It's an entertaining idea.
Be careful of what you wish for. You might wish to look at your local municipal/county/parish/state laws. I likely break dozens of laws/ordinances every day and I'm very positive you do as well, without even knowing it.
I am very saddened that I have to spell this out. I don't know whether you use NextDoor, throwawaysea. Would you be willing to post this under your real name in NextDoor and share the link here?
Okay but then isn't that the real problem? Of not regularly weeding out laws against things that people don't really feel need to be banned? It's kind of clumsy to take the approach of, "We're going to keep dubious laws on the books, and also have ultra-random, haphazard enforcement of all laws regardless of how merited."
People who abuse that situation and useless laws on the books.
Non-enforcement of bollocks laws is a feature.
Most people will not ever interact with law enforcement over bollocks laws.
There will always be bollocks laws.
Your wider point stands though, we should do some pruning, but that takes time, whereas non-enforcement is instantaneous.
Do both.
That is actually a very bad thing, and once the people in power abuse
If few people encounter "bollocks" laws then there is no outrage over their enforcement, therefore if you piss off the wrong person in government suddenly they go over your life with a fine tooth comb and you have 100 "bollocks" charges and your life is ruined but since you are just one person there is no so speak out for you.
>There will always be bollocks laws.
That is a bollocks position and one that can be solved (in part) with mandatory sunset of all laws. Every Law, Regulation, and policy should have to be affirmed by the legislature at minimum every 20 years if not more often. If not is ceases to exists
Any examples?
It's by the way really annoying that my question gets downvoted by zealous users who think I'm trying to make some kind of point when I was just genuinely interested. This site feels like a big aggressive battlefield nowadays, where everyone is just arguing and no-one is discussing like normal curious human beings.
I think that's how life and a fraction of the people in a large group tend to be everywhere.
And sometimes can be good to try to guess how others will interpret one's intentions, and write sth to sort out misunderstandings before they happen
But not always easy to guess / remember to
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22530/does-the-...
That sounds to me rather like you're saying "tell us your real name or you're lying", which seems a rather specious (and hostile) argument.
The problem, as is always the case, is that "minor offenses" are not equitably enforced.
So if the local white kids are hanging out at the corner of the park smoking weed, no one cares. No one posts to Nextdoor. The police don't show up. But four young hispanic men walking through the same white neighborhood (to get to a job, say) will freak someone out and a busybody post to nextdoor will end up getting them stopped. Oh, and it turns out that one of them has weed in his pocket. There's your "minor offense". It's still an offense, right? It deserves police attention?
You're looking at this with a microscope. No one is saying don't enforce boring laws. People are saying do it fairly. Nattering busybodies on Nextdoor are the opposite of fair.
What is more fair than locals choosing which stuff is bothering them?
There may be noble outcomes from this, but there are also clearly negative ones. Once again, I'm not claiming it was ever ND's intent to do this. Just that in practice the design of the system enabled and tacitly encouraged these behaviors.
It’s the reporting of the suspicion.
I don’t need my neighbour calling the police on the suspicious of $minor_offence.