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.