Hacker News Reader

Comment by volkk | Hacker News Reader

i think there's a really valuable app/site to be made that involves discovering people or handling communications literally on your block (i.e hyper local neighborhood). nextdoor is the 1.0 of this that introduced the concept but poorly, and i'm still waiting for a 2.0

i guess it doesn't have to be an app, since whatsapp can handle most of this, but there's a discovery piece that would be missing that this app can somehow handle.

View on HN

I could not disagree more strongly. I would be appalled at using an app for something better accomplished by a flyer or drinking coffee in front of my house. People live in physical space. "How do I talk to my next-door neighbor?" is not a problem that the internet should be helping with

I wouldn't be so quick to admonish the idea. Neighbours aren't always within talking distance. Even the writers of this article needed to create a WhatApp group, and you can already see the trouble in that. People want to receive messages about things in their neighbourhood, but groups chats cover fixed areas so some people might be on the "edge" of multiple groups. The logical solution here is a digital version of the old church notice boards you see in many towns, allowing people to place and view digital flyers in a certain range of their location.

Sure, if you have a house.

I live in a neighborhood of apartment buildings. I'm always wishing I had a dog (I have cats so it's not an option) or that there was a small neighborhood park to use as a common space. It's hard to get a sense of and connect with people on different floors, or the other end of the hallway, let alone next-door neighbors, just because it's harder to see the same people repeatedly.

I think the point of the article is that you can make this happen even without an app. And I believe the previous poster is trying to make the point that an app will create an low effort impersonal engagement that brings out the worst in people (essentially all these apps will end up as nextdoor). Why not invite the next neighbour you meet for a coffee, or do what the guys in the article have been doing and take a camping chair and sit in front of the building with a coffee on Saturday morning?

I think the point of the article is that you can do this without an app and the previous posters point is that app encourage low effort impersonal interactions instead of the personal community you want. So every app just quickly desolves into another nextdoor. Why don't you try asking the next neighbour you see to have a coffee, or do the same as the people in the article and take a camping chair and a coffee one Saturday morning and sit in front of your building?

From the article itself:

> After a while, we realized it was starting to become unwieldy texting everyone when we were going to be outside. Thus, the WhatsApp group was born.

Tech itself is not _inherently_ dehumanizing or isolating - only when it is used to _replace_ human interaction. When used to enable those high-quality social interactions, it is virtuous.

I agree with you. I like that they mentioned people came by to their larger event by way of the paper invitation. There's something about a paper invitation that signals thoughtfulness and care. You have to print out these things and actually go walk door to door to drop them off. It's not a huge amount of work, but way more than just tapping a button.

I actually have gotten paper invitations from a neighbor on my street for a holiday party at their house and ended up going without having met them before just because it felt good to see it on my door step. Somebody actually took the time (actually, it was their kids) to drop it off.

clearly this isn't working given that this post is highly upvoted as some kind of feat that people sat outside and talked to their neighbors. no one talks to each other, and either way you look at it, certain apps get people out there. love them or hate them, dating apps have made for plenty of encounters possible that otherwise wouldn't be. you can make the argument that they've made society worse, and I might agree with that, but we're already here. we're in the internet/device era where people rely so much on them that we might as well make better versions of the bad ones. i think there could be ways to do it well without making another nextdoor. just needs optimism and imagination

Insert joke that every app eventually evolves into an email (or chat) client?

More seriously, what differentiates your idea (or hope of execution) from NextDoor, and how would the app improve upon WhatsApp or other messaging clients that might already be ubiquitous? (I'm in the U.S. and sadly WhatsApp is not even close to Ubiquitous - but SMS/MMS is.)

Overall how would having to install an app, create an account, sign up, find contacts, etc. improve upon the connections the original article formed through in person meetings in shared space, and the communications they did with an existing communications app?

These days, replace “email client” with “social network.”

Social networks could just be email clients. They're not, because those are hard to put a moat around.

I really don't. Every attempt at an online local community just ends up gathering gigakarens, racists, and complainers.

It seems so obvious now that social media as an entire concept is rotten and that the best way to connect with your community is to actually go outside and talk to people face to face.

The most important part, no matter if it's email, Nextdoor, WhatsApp, is that we can use it to disperse information quickly, and then get off the platform and meet up in person. Our stoop coffees are broadcasted via WhatsApp, and then some people tell their immediate neighbors via text, and then people show up.

Vermont has something sort of like this called Front Porch Forum. It's something I would like to see tried elsewhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com