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Comment by drdeadringer | Hacker News Reader

I 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].

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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?

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.

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...

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?

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.”

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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