
How Nextdoor reduced racist posts - pavel_lishin
http://fusion.net/story/340171/how-nextdoor-reduced-racial-profiling/
======
pilom
Finally! This was one of the reasons I stopped actively using Nextdoor. My
neighborhood in Denver is composed of a large group of elderly white people
(who all seem to use Nextdoor somehow) and then a diverse group of people who
have moved into this lower income neighborhood as the old people have passed
away. The amount of profiling was painful. We had a black mentally handicapped
man get picked up by the police because he asked a neighbor to borrow a ladder
and she posted to nextdoor that she thought her house was getting cased to be
robbed (and the police and Nextdoor have a partnership in our area). Hopefully
this helps some.

~~~
smsm42
> black mentally handicapped man get picked up by the police because he asked
> a neighbor to borrow a ladder

I think there's a problem with the police, not Nextdoor, here. I mean, ok,
somebody asked to check out suspicious person (and police, with their
experience, should know how (non-)reliable such reports usually are) and they
did. But picking the person up - which I understand means detaining the person
- is decision that the police officer responding is making. No reporter can
make such decision. And if this decision leads to innocent man borrowing a
ladder being detained - this is not really reporter's fault, it's the police
being unprofessional.

~~~
dopamean
From my perspective as a black man the problem is someone thinking a black man
is suspicious for no reason other than that he's black.

~~~
rubicon33
You are making an assumption that there was no other reason. OP stated the man
was mentally handicapped. Isn't it possible he was also acting strangely?

~~~
hondo77
A reasonable assumption given that the OP didn't give any other reason. Are
you assuming there was another reason?

~~~
smsm42
We don't know anything about the reasons - we have only third-party
information, which describes that some called the police on a mentally
challenged person who had no ill intent, and that person also was black. Maybe
racism added to the picture - quite possible, maybe not - it's impossible to
tell from just this. It is a fact that there are many cases when black people
are treated with prejudice, it is also a fact that there are many cases where
mentally ill people are treated with prejudice, and it is also a fact that
there are many cases where there are misunderstandings between people not
caused by racism or anything like that. If you're a lone elderly woman and see
somebody going about your property that you don't know and behaving weirdly,
you might feel threatened, whether it's warranted or not. Surely, race _may_
have played a role, but we don't have any real reason to conclude either way
without knowing first-person accounts.

~~~
wcummings
You're trying really hard to justify how this isn't racism. The poster lives
there and knows these people, take it or leave it, your opinion isn't
valuable.

~~~
jasikpark
What he's saying is that we don't know. Innocent until proven guilty, maybe?

~~~
wcummings
This isn't a courtroom, it's OP's anecdote. Stop concern trolling.

------
lagadu
I didn't know what nextdoor was (nor do I live where it exists) but I see what
seems to be a fundamental error:

\- They claim to have reduced "racist posts" by 75%.

\- They say they accomplished this by asking extra questions whenever a racial
descriptor was used.

In other words they simply made it harder to post when using a racial
descriptor than not and claim this is a great reduction in racist posting. As
a software developer I'm well aware of one thing: the more complicated I make
a feature's interface be, the fewer people are going to use it. Without them
having enabled the extra difficulty for all posting regardless of having used
the racial descriptor or not, they're simply looking at people who don't post
more using race not because they're racist but because they're placing an
artificial hurdle associated with that.

Now, if they simply wanted for people not to describe race they should've
simply removed it from the options; they seem to be so proud of effectively
doing that but in a (thinly) veiled way, as I understand it they're saying
that any posts that include race of the individual are racist.

Am I missing something obvious here?

~~~
dfabulich
Nextdoor "suspicious activity" reports were notorious for racist reports that
should never have been made. "Everyone be on the look out! I saw a black man
walking around in our neighborhood, possibly looking for houses to rob."

If the UI helps people realize that a black man walking down the street is not
suspicious activity and should not be reported as such, then it is doing its
job effectively.

~~~
cloudjacker
How exactly does that work, given Google Streetview

~~~
mintplant
I really don't understand what you mean by this.

------
karma_vaccum123
I had to quit Nextdoor. The same small cabal of loudmouths was overwhelming
the forums with strong (yet uninformed) opinions, reflex hatred of anything
signalling change, and a general seething that bordered on xenophobia. I
expect some NIMBYism, but this was outrageously militant hatred of the future
masquerading as quaint pride.

Nextdoor also seems to give people strange priorities for civic engagement.
Winning an argument on Nextdoor doesn't change policy...speaking at
Council/School Board meetings does, or better yet, running in an election.

Lots of people on our local Nextdoor seemed frustrated that the Council were
voting contrary to some conclusion that was reached on the site. They failed
to realize they needed to be making arguments where it mattered - at Council
meetings, not online in some private forum.

~~~
fapjacks
Right, exactly! The one thing Nextdoor taught me is that people are truly just
as awful as you could imagine. I have lived in nice neighborhoods -- as I
imagine a fair amount of HN readers do -- and the blase of outright totally
racist posts just... Well, it was just shocking, and I have to say that I'm
not shocked by very many things. That some people _know_ that they're posting
to their physical _neighbors_ and still saying the things they say... It's
almost like they live on another planet altogether. Now, another very weird
thing is that I've moved into a new neighborhood literally down the street
from my old one, and I was equally shocked to learn that this particular
neighborhood is totally reasonable, and I haven't even seen a single racist
hate-post.

Nextdoor definitely exposed me to the racist, backwards reality of living
among old, wealthy, scared, white people.

~~~
mavhc
Use it to lie to them about when elections are.

The thing that's worse about elections being won by idiots and racists is now
you know that most people around you are idiots, racists, or happy to stand
next to the racist idiots.

~~~
fapjacks
I regret that I can only upvote your comment a single time.

------
TheGRS
Our company recently did a trial of looking for unconscious bias when we are
making decisions, especially in terms of hiring practices. We all took a test
to see if we had any unconscious bias toward gender and then discussed our
results as a group. What really stuck with me is not that we have these sort
of tendencies, but how shocked most people were at their own results. Most men
in the room trended toward a bias toward men and women toward women. That
shouldn't be that surprising really, but many were very disappointed in their
results.

I've been thinking it would be good to do another round of that with the race
test, especially considering how predominately white our workplace is. I don't
believe everyone is actively trying to be racist or sexist (though some
certainly are), but we might not realize that we're doing that on an
unconscious level.

The tests are available here if you'd like to give it a try yourself, doesn't
take very long.
[https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html](https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html)

~~~
allendoerfer
Inside the German version there is a test for biases against Western or
Eastern Germany. I knew that I had a bias, but I was surprised that I found it
that difficult when moving a bunch of Eastern German cities to one group to
associate negative things to the group with the Western German cities.

The test might not be totally fair, though. Is it actually a bias if it is
based on facts? Soviet architecture, higher unemployment, high rate of
extremism, lower buying power, less people, people moving to the West, the
list goes on and on. I think stereotypes and preconceived notions are bad most
of the time, but I see no reason to get rid of the ones that are actually true
for political correctness.

~~~
Mithaldu
What is the german version of nextdoor? I've never heard of such a thing.

~~~
Jarwain
I think he's referring to the german version of the implicit association test

------
pavlov
This could work on HN too. A simple list of combinations of keywords (such as
"Node.js" and "shit") detected in a comment submission could trigger a
confirmation dialog: "Are you sure this is a meaningful contribution?"

~~~
beat
I'm not sure Node.js is a meaningful contribution, no. :)

~~~
frogpelt
That's the joke.

------
randomanybody
It's interesting how different neighborhoods can be in the same city. In
Seattle, my old neighborhood's board (First Hill) was vastly different than
that of Ballard, to the point where I wasn't sure my friends who lived there
were talking about the same site. The latter sounded like it was filled
entirely with militant, yet simultaneously skittish NIMBYers, while mine was
filled with park get-togethers and lost puppies. And since you could only see
one neighborhood, the other experience was invisible to me.

~~~
techsupporter
I live in the Central District of Seattle and a friend, who made an account
and lets me log in so I can read, lives in Wallingford. The differences are
appalling. The CD has its share of minor crime but reports of suspicious
activity are accompanied by descriptions beyond race or, sometimes, security
camera output. This is mixed in with posts about giveaways, contractor
recommendations, and Metro bus reroutes due to construction.

Meanwhile, my friend's account showed lots of posts like described here. Oh,
and the slagging on the homeless was just vile. I have screenshots of several
examples but I don't want Nextdoor to go all Erica Barnett on me and ban
accounts so I leave them out. But the police department had a lot more
"community forums" on the Wallingford part of Nextdoor than the CD's...

------
hackuser
The Washington Post covering the same story:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2016/08/26...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2016/08/26/how-this-social-network-for-neighborhoods-is-trying-to-
fix-its-racism-problem/)

\----

And also the WP covering a similar problem in Georgetown (a wealthy district
in Washington):

* The secret surveillance of ‘suspicious’ blacks in one of the nation’s poshest neighborhoods

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/the-
secre...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/the-secret-
surveillance-of-suspicious-blacks-in-one-of-the-nations-poshest-
neighborhoods/2015/10/13/2e47236c-6c4d-11e5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_story.html)

* The black man arrested in Georgetown because he looked like a shoplifter

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/the-
black...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/the-black-man-
arrested-in-georgetown-because-he-looked-like-a-
shoplifter/2015/10/16/0a93fd00-7409-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html)

* Georgetown social network accused of racial profiling is suspended

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/georgetown-social-
netwo...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/georgetown-social-network-
accused-of-racial-profiling-is-
suspended/2015/10/19/7a8865a2-7674-11e5-b9c1-f03c48c96ac2_story.html)

(Wow. What is the shortest possible Washington Post URL?)

------
daenz
Side note, brilliant marketing. This is such a hot-button topic, that although
I disagree fundamentally with their solution, it will definitely have a lot of
people talking about it.

I wish he had gone into more details about what counts as a "racist post." He
seems to imply that people were just saying "black dude walking around." But
would "black man peering into parked cars" also be flagged? And do those extra
barriers, existing solely because of the word "black", lower the reporting
rate of those kinds of posts?

~~~
clifanatic
Or "man peering into black cars".

------
eknight15
Great to see design changes that have a positive social impact.

I really like Nextdoor, it's one of the few social networks I feel good using.

------
oldmanjay
While I laud the goals, it's sort of disappointing to see such adherence to
the idea that suppressing the expression of racism is going to fix it.

~~~
ap3
A racist crime report will have real world consequences though - it's not just
thoughts in someones head.

It will involve other people and potentially the police.

~~~
beat
Remember, these kinds of racially biased reports can get people _killed_.
That's not insignificant.

~~~
smsm42
Reports don't get people killed. People (usually, police) shooting other
people get people killed. Reporter has no control (unless they specifically
and purposely misrepresent the situation, e.g. falsely reporting somebody
firing a gun when they have none) over police actions. The police should bear
the responsibility for the outcomes, not reporters or online platform or any
other factor that did not actually make a decision to pull the trigger.

~~~
KingMob
Are plane crashes are only caused by gravity, or is that engine that caught
fire somehow related?

Please, don't be pedantic. Police make mistakes, and have their own biases, to
boot. If you call them on some random non-white person in your neighborhood,
and disaster ensues, you're partly culpable.

~~~
smsm42
It's not pedantry. Gravity has no will and no choice, thus blaming gravity is
useless. Police does have will and choice - it's not a law of nature that if
you call the police they'll kill somebody, police is not a gun or any other
mechanism that you just fire. These are people, who have free will, minds and
responsibility for their actions. That's the whole point, only humans can take
blame, and when their choices result in bad results, they _should_ take blame
for their choices, not redirect it to others.

> Police make mistakes, and have their own biases, to boot.

You say it as if it's some kind of excuse. It's funny that for reporter have
biases is a culpable offense, but for the police it comes out as a defense
instead. It doesn't work this way. In fact, random civilians have full right
to be wrong, police are (or supposed to be) trained professionals that are
paid to be better than civilians at this. So for them to behave worse than a
random civilian should be a firing offense, not an excuse.

> If you call them on some random non-white person in your neighborhood, and
> disaster ensues, you're partly culpable.

Nope. The police function is to protect people. If they instead hurt innocent
people, this is their fault, not somebody's that called on their direct and
proper function. Their refusal to perform the function is their fault. Just as
if you walk on the street and get mugged, you are not "partly culpable",
because you could've walked on other street or stayed home - people who mugged
you are fully culpable, because it was their choice to do it.

If you assign blame at the wrong place, they only result would be that people
that need to change won't change, and you get more of the same problem. Which
we are amply witnessing right now.

~~~
KingMob
But the sad reality is whether it's a mistake or prejudice, police wield
deadly force, so calling them always has the possibility of someone dying.

Should they be held to a higher standard? Yes. But many aren't, and until that
happens, thinking otherwise is wishful or naive. If you call the police, and
it spirals out of control, you DO bear some measure of responsibility. Not as
much as the actual police, but it's not zero, either, especially if your call
is racially motivated.

Mugging isn't a counterexample, because the mugger and the muggee have
completely opposite desires in the situation. Nobody calls up a mugger and
invites them to their neighborhood. Whereas, when you call the cops, you're
somewhat in alignment.

------
smsm42
Well, it looks like they define racist post as:

The company decided to define it as descriptions of criminal behavior that
don’t have sufficient description, i.e. “dark-skinned man broke into a car” or
a detailed description of someone, including race, that fails to describe them
doing something sufficiently criminal.

I.e. it is a description that mentions race and lacks either: a) specific
criminal behavior or b) other non-race details.

In this case, no wonder that forcing people to provide these details reduces
number of such posts - it's practically guaranteed by the very definition!

I also wonder about this:

Nextdoor is aware of “two instances of racial profiling that had slipped
through its algorithms in the last few months.”

Nextdoor is a pretty large network. And they have quite a lot of people there,
tens if not hundreds of thousands at least. And only _two_ cases of profiling
in several months, less then one case per month over whole network? It's
either nextdoor users actually are nearly saints in this regard, at least
compared to regular population, or they are humblebragging, or the problem
itself is really minuscule, or they are blind to it.

------
jecjec
Is Nextdoor wise to pursue this end? (pdf)
[http://2kpcwh2r7phz1nq4jj237m22.wpengine.netdna-
cdn.com/wp-c...](http://2kpcwh2r7phz1nq4jj237m22.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/Color-Of-Crime-2016.pdf)

Synopsis: [http://www.amren.com/the-color-of-crime/](http://www.amren.com/the-
color-of-crime/)

------
randyrand
I understand that it's racial bias to assume that someone is more likely to
commit a crime given the color of their skin, but at the same time given that
thats a reasonable assumption, I also think it's very reasonable to put your
own safety above social progress.

Are my priorities not inline?

------
tptacek
I didn't even know Nextdoor was a thing until I saw this post. Where, once
logged in, would I look to see random people being reported as suspicious by
my neighbors?

~~~
mercutio2
Well, you can't get an account until you validate your postal address, then
you only get access to posts from your neighborhood and adjoining
neighborhoods.

Once you've signed up, if you install the app, you can configure push
notifications about crimes in progress. You can also get emails for urgent
things, if you prefer.

Whether this improves, or diminishes, security and quality of life relative to
reading your local newspaper's coverage, is unclear to me. Even when it's not
subtly racist or ageist profiling, I've never found the alerts to be
actionable.

But the hyperlocal idea is at least an interesting one.

------
jomamaxx
Who decides what 'racism' is?

It's a pretty tricky thing.

Should our corporate overlords be making this decision?

Outside of hate speech, which has some legal parameters, this is pretty tough.

Especially if it's people's personal communications.

Some people think that speaking out against 'Black Lives Matter' is racist,
while others think that 'Black Lives Matter' is in fact racist.

It's a thin line.

------
thescribe
I wonder if they're just scanning for the word "black" or other races too.

Edit:

I answer my own question pretty quickly but it led to a second thought. I'm
curious if the reduction is just people not reporting things because there are
more steps now.

~~~
LeoPanthera
It says right on the article.

"Others actually had their posts scanned for mentions of race (based on a list
of hundreds of terms Nextdoor came up with)"

Edit: You edited your post. Your original comment I was replying to said
something along the lines of "I wonder if they're just scanning for the word
"black" or other races too."

~~~
thescribe
Shoot sorry about that, I hadn't seen your comment. I'll revert my post.

