
Nextdoor ends its program for forwarding suspicions to police - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-19/why-nextdoor-cut-its-forward-to-police-tool
======
wespiser_2018
I live in an immediate suburb of Boston, and joined Nextdoor and joined to see
what features were attracting so many folks to a new social media platform.
Wow! Anyone with a tattoo, going to your door for any reason was considered
"suspicious" and reported. One alarming thing, is that NextDoor is feeding on
our fears about outsiders who look different, and creating a loop out of this
for higher engagement when people post pictures and engage their camera feed.

It's too bad, I think idea of organizing a social network based on proximity
and centered around community information is a viable idea, It's just that
NextDoor is doing that with our worst instincts.

~~~
hombre_fatal
> I think idea of organizing a social network based on proximity and centered
> around community information is a viable idea

NextDoor and Craigslist and Reddit's /r/{city} communities just prove that it
may be viable but it's pretty undesirable. I think it's best to not give the
most neurotic, ill people of your community the loudest voice, but these
social networks also create this neuroticism and illness.

You also create a scenario (NextDoor especially) where all the sane people are
driven out by the crazies. Back when NextDoor was new, after a year it would
come up in conversation and sure enough, anyone normal would admit they tried
it and had to delete it.

Social media is messing us up. I don't think we're missing some new take on it
that's going to make it all better. I think the vestigially tribal parts of
our brain make it a non-starter. We need to get back to the face-to-face -- it
seems to be the only way we keep in mind that there's a human at the other end
of the line, not some nebulous automaton that we craft into everything we hate
in the world.

~~~
vector_spaces
People behaving badly doesn't always imply they have mental illness. In my
experience people with and without mental illness can be quick to be
suspicious of others, hold prejudices, and involve law enforcement in the face
of people just trying to go about their lives

I agree that the behavior being capitalized on here is pathological but using
the terms "neuroticism", "illness", and "crazies" here unfairly and wrongly
stigmatizes people with mental illness when in practice people with mental
illness are more likely to be harmed by these suspicious posts and behavior
nextdoor had been encouraging

~~~
heavyset_go
I agree with your analysis. It's better to not think of such behavior as a
result of a real illness of the mind, but a metaphorical illness of the heart.
There's a certain sickness element to it, as well as an element of social
contagion, so I understand the words used, but disagree with how they were
used.

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jacquesm
Hah. East Germans know exactly what this sort of thing will lead to: selective
enforcement against those that the police wish to target anyway. Nothing like
a bit of good old snitching to the authorities. Too bad if you're not lily
white and walking around in a posh - or not so posh - neighborhood past what
others think should be your curfew.

Of course, if you are witness to a serious crime you should report it. But if
someone waters their lawn, sleeps in their car, or pees in their garden then
that's their business and usually not yours so as long as you are not
inconvenienced you should mind your own business lest one day the tables are
turned and you forget to bring in your garbage container. And that's before we
get into reporting people 'walking while black', those things might actually
be against a law.

If you're breaking N laws per day think about what the effect would be if
those were _all_ enforced. Do not do unto others... And don't give racists
even more tools for harassment.

~~~
smcl
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that many people perceive:

\- themselves as perfect but making the odd honest mistake every now and then

\- others as fundamentally flawed, persistent rule-breakers who Need To Be
Punished

Even if they’re broadly the same or worse. This is true on the road, in
college or writing code. A lot of people will be unable to look at their own
tiny little infractions and see them as equivalent to the flagrant disregard
for the rules that they observe in others.

~~~
Analemma_
Close, but it’s more like “people perceive themselves _and their ingroup_ as
perfect but making occasional honest mistakes” and perceive their outgroup as
flawed, persistent rule-breakers. And guess who the outgroup tends to be in
racially homogeneous neighborhoods.

~~~
mistermann
It's not unlike HN when the topic of discussion is politics. Flip a variable
or two and most humans behave similarly, thanks to evolution.

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js2
The vast majority of nextdoor posts in my area are people asking whether a
snake is a copperhead or not and then arguing over whether or not to kill it.
Followed by people complaining about X (speeders, dog poop, roaming cats,
etc). Also a lot of folks looking for miss-delivered packages.

It's useful for borrowing a car seat, getting recommendations for plumbers,
electricians, etc, advertising extra garden produce we wish to give away, and
so forth. Otherwise, I stay off of it.

Also from a technical and UI perspective, the web site is atrocious. It loads
terribly slowly on a current generation iPad, constantly tries to route you to
its app, makes it way too easy to accidentally interact with a post or
comment, defaults to "top posts" instead of "recent activity" and on and on.
It's barely any better visiting on a desktop.

I much prefer the sub-reddits, city-data forums, and even FB groups for my
area for keeping in touch with what's going around me.

~~~
downerending
Same here, although within the last 24 hours, my neighborhood's chat is
starting to look like a Twitter-ish hate-fest. If they don't stop, I'm going
to chuck it in the same dumpster as Twitter.

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supernova87a
I think the problem with such tools is that the technology disconnected our
societal checks to make sure that such tools are used correctly. Or didn't
consider the need for that function at all as this new online capability was
created. It was just some developer+PM saying, "what if we offered this?" And
it just appeared, a new feature in the world.

Now, maybe I will be downvoted for saying (in this climate), but the ability
for people to see something suspicious and do something about it _is
important_. You would have the pendulum swing the other way and have people
actively tell themselves to ignore potential crime / bad actors, or be unable
to report something legitimate?

But the point is that up to recent years, your interactions with police were
not anonymous, and you had to (generally) put your name and reputation (or
phone number and your voice) behind things that you asserted were true. There
was an element of credibility verification in the reporting.

Today, anonymity on the internet, and the ease of creating false (or biased)
reports has unleashed a tidal wave of noise and bad information, with no
repercussions (reputation-wise, or cost) to the persons creating it. And the
effects are all externalized to those who wrongly come under suspicion.

There are some things that need to have a barrier to being done, and taking it
online lowers that barrier. Until we figure out what that caused, and how it's
to be handled correctly, it's right that these portals disable the features
that are causing us these kinds of societal mistakes -- and we actively should
choose to slow down our adoption of things that we don't yet understand the
full implications of.

~~~
ikeyany
The ability to report dangerous things to the proper authorities is one of the
ways you know you live in a functional society.

That said, this whole topic brings up the question of "At what cost?" We won't
see the macroeffects these have on our communities for quite a while. Our base
insticts when it comes to how we should react when we see something off, are
slowly changing.

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jackcosgrove
I just logged into NextDoor today after years of inactivity because I wanted
to see if there were resources about how to dispose of bulky trash items.

Wow, what a mess! Standard lost dog fare, but also a lot of busybodies
nitpicking about neighbors' municipal code violations, suspicions of people
who don't look like they "fit" the neighborhood, and general bickering in
every comment thread.

NextDoor seems like a good idea, until you execute and it turns out the power
users are busybodies holed up at home who have way too much time to
micromanage the goings-on in their neighborhoods.

~~~
Spooky23
My neighborhood in Nextdoor was actually pretty non-toxic until recently. It
has become overrun with lost/found/who owns this cat posts and people
complaining about fireworks and dog trauma. (Since we had riots fireworks have
been a constant presence)

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int_19h
Some of the things on Nextdoor remind me of "Snow Crash" sometimes.

"Fairlanes, Inc. is laying new ones all the time. Have to bulldoze lots of
neighborhoods to do it, but those seventies and eighties developments exist to
be bulldozed, right? No sidewalks, no schools, no nothing. Don’t have their
own police force — no immigration control — undesirables can walk right in
without being frisked or even harassed. Now a Burbclave, that’s the place to
live. A city-state with its own constitution, a border, laws, cops,
everything."

"MetaCops Unlimited is the official peacekeeping force of White Columns, and
also of The Mews at Windsor Heights, The Heights at Bear Run, Cinnamon Grove,
and The Farms of Cloverdelle. They also enforce traffic regulations on all
highways and byways operated by Fairlanes, Inc. ... MetaCops’ main competitor,
WorldBeat Security, handles all roads belonging to Cruiseways, plus has
worldwide contracts with Dixie Traditionals, Pickett’s Plantation, Rainbow
Heights (check it out — two apartheid Burbclaves and one for black suits),
Meadowvale on the [insert name of river] and Brickyard Station. WorldBeat is
smaller than MetaCops, handles more upscale contracts, supposedly has a bigger
espionage arm — though if that’s what people want, they just talk to an
account rep at the Central Intelligence Corporation. And then there’s The
Enforcers — but they cost a lot and don’t take well to supervision. It is
rumored that, under their uniforms, they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial
Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick, emblazoned with the words
SUE ME. ... These Burbclaves! These city-states! So small, so insecure, that
just about everything, like not mowing your lawn, or playing your stereo too
loud, becomes a national security issue."

------
alance
As someone who is trying to run a vaguely similar service (streetmates.net)
I'm wondering how communities can be guided to be constructive and pleasant.

Or maybe people are just people, pleasant and unpleasant and everything else,
and it can't really be helped?

It seems like putting something on the front page like "hey don't be a racist
busy-body" isn't really enough. And at the other end of the extreme you've got
Facebook employing organisations that filter sensitive content - with fairly
horrific outcomes for the individuals who do the monitoring.

HackerNews is a pretty good example of getting a certain standard of behaviour
out of people en masse. I wonder what the secret sauce was?

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Grimm1
Nextdoor just seems like another 1984 esq system especially because of their
ties to the state through the Police. This will never be making its way into
my home. It honestly astounds me that people buy into these things especially
with potentially petty neighbors you're one bad day away from being the person
who "doesn't belong" in the neighborhood.

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neonate
[https://archive.vn/hFSCI](https://archive.vn/hFSCI)

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chasd00
heh yeah i get lots of "beware of this suspicious person" messages that turn
out to be hte mail man on Next Door. However, it is very useful for lost pets.
IMO they need to expand on that utility, i routinely see lost/found pet posts
were the owner and pet are eventually re-united via Next Door.

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pcvarmint
See something, say something

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mrfusion
When will Ring step up?

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rubyn00bie
Fuck you, Nextdoor. Not. Enough.

Nextdoor is known to be platform that enables bigotry and perpetuates racial
stereotypes. Nextdoor, not forwarding bullshit suspicions to the police, is
the least they could do since they created the fucking problem to begin with.

It encourages one to view everyone who you don't immediately recognize as an
outsider, causing you to fear them, and then share that fear with others so
they too can be afraid. It's absolute madness, and I haven't ever heard a good
thing in the real world about Nextdoor. I have had people assume my race
incorrectly though, and gleefully admit their racist usage of it not knowing
what they were about to say would be considered so fucking awful...

~~~
chillacy
I don't use nextdoor so I don't know, but how much is caused by the platform's
design and how much of that is just "these suburbanites are racist"?

~~~
Spooky23
Racism is only one annoying persona.

The big advertisers have been Ring and security companies, so they tend to
attract people worried about other people. They suppress things like political
posts, so there really isn’t anything to do but worry about lost cats or
busybody crap.

------
throwawaysea
> Civil rights and privacy advocates have raised concerns about how the
> feature streamlined the reporting of suspicions about minor offenses,
> encouraging police to follow up on what would have otherwise been casual
> observations on social media.

Why is this a problem? Minor offenses are still offenses and they can often be
very frustrating and problematic. They still deserve police attention where
they constitute a violation of the law. Streamlining the process is a positive
not negative, and the framing here just seems like these activist groups don’t
want people to be held accountable.

~~~
pooper
>Why is this a problem? Minor offenses are still offenses and they can often
be very frustrating and problematic. They still deserve police attention where
they constitute a violation of the law. Streamlining the process is a positive
not negative, and the framing here just seems like these activist groups don’t
want people to be held accountable.

Be careful of what you wish for. You might wish to look at your local
municipal/county/parish/state laws. I likely break dozens of laws/ordinances
every day and I'm very positive you do as well, without even knowing it.

I am very saddened that I have to spell this out. I don't know whether you use
NextDoor, throwawaysea. Would you be willing to post this under your real name
in NextDoor and share the link here?

~~~
SilasX
>I likely break dozens of laws/ordinances every day and I'm very positive you
do as well, without even knowing it.

Okay but then isn't that the real problem? Of not regularly weeding out laws
against things that people don't really feel need to be banned? It's kind of
clumsy to take the approach of, "We're going to keep dubious laws on the
books, and also have ultra-random, haphazard enforcement of all laws
regardless of how merited."

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
We can do both.

Non-enforcement of bollocks laws is a _feature_.

Most people will not ever interact with law enforcement over bollocks laws.

There will always be bollocks laws.

Your wider point stands though, we should do some pruning, but that takes
time, whereas non-enforcement is instantaneous.

Do both.

~~~
SilasX
Yeah, but "bollocks" is a four-letter word (metaphorically) -- the feature
doesn't first establish consensus on what laws _are_ bollocks. What you call a
bollocks law, I might call "reasonable one that ensures people aren't
screaming outside my window at 1am".

~~~
jquery
You’re absolutely right, I don’t understand why you’re being downvoted.

