Hacker News Reader

Comment by valentinemsmith | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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?

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?

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

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...

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com