
The rise of fear-based social media like Nextdoor, Citizen, and Amazon Neighbors - cardamomo
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/7/18528014/fear-social-media-nextdoor-citizen-amazon-ring-neighbors
======
tuxxy
Nextdoor is... very odd.

In Salt Lake City, where I currently live, all I see are people complaining
about homeless people and "suspicious people", who are _always_ people of
color just walking down the street (who I've actually recognized
occasionally).

Yeah, people call others out on this sort of casual racism, but it doesn't
make it go away. It becomes a hotbed of these kinds of thoughts. When someone
gets a bike stolen, you'll always see a comment like "The homeless problem
here is out of control" and sometimes a comment with a picture of some random
(again, person of color...) walking down the street from a Nest cam asking,
"Did you see anyone like this? My bike was stolen too."

It's so odd to me to see all this on Nextdoor because I live a block away from
a homeless shelter (one of the "gritty" parts of the city) and I can count
only twice that I've had issues with homeless people or crime. I've lived here
for almost six years now and I've never felt nearly as nervous or afraid as
some of these Nextdoor users claim.

However, there is a ton of amusement from Nextdoor users, as well. The number
of times I've seen people call each other rude because they used the word
"fuck" in their post is extremely high, but that could be because I live in
Utah haha.

In short, it's my experience that Nextdoor is filled with the type of person
who calls the cops on their neighbors for no reason (like noise complaints).
These users would really benefit from just getting to know their neighbors in
real life.

~~~
burlesona
That kind of paranoid neighbor is nothing new. They would benefit from being
social shamed and isolated. Connecting a whole network of them together is
just about the worst thing I can think of.

Nothing reinforces crazy like an echo chamber.

~~~
Amezarak
If people are having their bikes stolen, that’s not paranoia. I would not want
to live in such a neighborhood and it’s always a little shocking to me to see
this type of commentary on Hacker News where low level theft and vandalism
appears to be accepted as just how life is. It definitely doesn’t have to be.

~~~
burlesona
The majority of low-level theft and vandalism is by bored teenagers in their
own neighborhood.

The worst petty crime I ever had to deal with was living next to a middle
school in a nice neighborhood in Houston. There were car windows smashed all
the time by middle and even upper-middle class kids walking home from school
and seeing something shiny in the passenger seat.

It sucks, but it’s not a good justification for being afraid of “those
people.” Turns our those people is us.

~~~
mc32
In my neighborhood there are very few teenagers. The bike thieves, package
thieves and car ransackers are either actual thieves (with lookouts), or
addicts. People like to blame bored teenagers, but given my city has one of
the lowest percentages of teenagers in the country but yet this happens,
indicates it’s something else (proven by the pictures and videos posted by
neighbors).

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ethagnawl
In my limited experience with it, Citizen is trash and incentivizes bad
behavior.

I once watched someone live streaming themselves following police into a call
at a private residence. Unsurprisingly, the police officers responding forced
the person back out onto the street. Now, I am all for accountability,
bodycams, etc. but ordinary people holding up their smartphones _should not_
be following police officers into active crime scenes and any company that
incentivizes or gamifies this behavior is, by definition, trash.

~~~
gradyj
Sounds like Nightcrawler to me.. creepy.

~~~
burger_moon
The game Charlie and Frank play at night?

------
standardUser
I live in a very dense part of San Francisco and most of the Nextdoor activity
I see is people complaining about the constant car break-ins, human feces,
needles, package theft and unstable vagrants. There's one group that thinks
these things are bad and should be stopped, and another group that likes to
argue otherwise.

Sometimes there's some overt racism but usually those posts disappear quickly.

~~~
TomVDB
In our well to do South Bay neighborhood, it's about unknowns ringing their
door bell, which is obviously a very suspicious activity.

When my wife and I once had to go to all the houses of the neighborhood, it
was amazing how many people who were clearly at home did not open their door.

It's a totally alien concept to where I originally come from.

~~~
ryandrake
In this thread people are scared to open their doors when someone knocks. In
the other thread people are scared to knock on their neighbor’s door. How did
this society become so irrationally terrified of everything? I know people who
won’t let their kids outside because they think crime is everywhere. This is
in a firmly middle class single family home Leave It To Beaver neighborhood.

~~~
standardUser
Communication technology has changed everything. We expect to be communicated
with first in ways that have a minimal impact on our time and personal space,
like text, email or a messaging system. We can handle those communications if
and when we deem fit.

Someone calling on the phone or knocking on the door is someone demanding
immediate and exclusive use of my time for reasons only they know. In the case
of a door, they are also asking for access to my home (to a degree).

The fact that the vast majority of those calls and knocks are for sales,
religion or politics make us rightly avoidant. And sure, some can even be
dangerous. But almost none of them are people we actually want to communicate
with. Those people would have already called/texted/emailed. If they called,
we'd recognize their number. If they were coming over, they'd give us advance
warning.

So the folks left surprising us are the folks we are least likely to want to
engage with.

------
jshaqaw
Interesting. I signed up for Nextdoor to see what it is based on this article.
For my NYC neighborhood it’s all tag sales, requests for opthomology
recommendations, etc... No fear monger it in sight.

~~~
orthecreedence
Try it in a mostly-white suburban neighborhood. You'll rapidly add new items
to your library of dog whistles.

~~~
taborj
Checking in from a mostly-white suburban neighborhood. The only "crime" post
I've ever seen was about a homeless guy going through trashcans and yelling at
people. Everything else is as OP states; yard sales, missing (and found) pets,
etc.

Edit: I also find it ironical that you're fear mongering on a post complaining
that apps are fear mongering...

~~~
res0nat0r
Like everyone's complaints about Slack, it's the users and not Nextdoor that
are the problem.

~~~
cantchoose
Sure, but like Slack at work, you don't have the option to choose who you're
connected to on it. So if you happen to have bad people on it (and both apps
incentivize people who are inclined to act poorly to do so), you're boned.

------
mikeash
I live in the DC suburbs about a mile from a relatively new Metro station. The
local Nextdoor is fairly reasonable, but about once a month someone posts to
report a small crime (like a car break-in) and concludes with something like,
“this never happened before Metro was put in.”

Right, because criminals are spending an hour on the train, then walking a
mile or two to your house so they can commit a crime, then hustling to get
back home before the system closes down for the night.

It certainly is interesting to see how disconnected from reality some people
are.

------
Supermancho
Nextdoor.com was something I resisted for a long time, despite the number of
neighbors using it. Once I signed up, I have be an ardent supporter. Having
moved 3 times since, my partner and I both use it as extensively as the
neighborhood requires. The ability to restrict messages to a specific
neighborhood or set of surrounding with appropriate veiling of information, is
brilliant.

------
pjc50
Any social media can be fear-based if you're scared enough.

"Fear of crime" has rarely had much connection to actual crime levels, far
more to do with perceptions of cleanliness and social class.

~~~
davidgould
And color, can’t forget color..

------
davidw
These two twitter accounts are pretty entertaining:

[https://twitter.com/bestofnextdoor?lang=en](https://twitter.com/bestofnextdoor?lang=en)

and

[https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv?lang=en](https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv?lang=en)

Nextdoor is definitely a vector for accute NIMBYism where I live.

------
cmurf
I have a friend on Nextdoor who routinely complains of neighbors freaking out
about "suspicious" people in the neighborhood, how crime is on the rise, and
oh my god what are we going to do!? All that angst despite that neighborhood
has one of the lowest crime rates in Denver, and there is zero evidence from
publicly available police records that the crime rate is going up.

~~~
lazyasciiart
People in Seattle are starting to sound like conspiracy theorists in their
efforts to explain why crime reporting data doesn't show that Ballard is now a
hellish warzone where they fear for their lives just opening the front door.

~~~
techsupporter
Holy crap, no kidding. Between NextDoor and /r/SeattleWA, compared to my own
experience, I'm beginning to think that I live in one of The Orville's split
universes. According to those forums, there are lawless hordes of vagrant
gangs roaming the streets, dumping bags of used syringes onto little old
ladies in walkers while stealing their bikes and running over children with
RVs.

Meanwhile, I (a person with no car so I walk and bus everywhere since my
neighborhood isn't cool enough to get light rail...ever) barely see any of
what they describe. Yes, there are a handful of tents around freeway onramps.
Yes, the trash looks a little unsightly. Yes, I wish it wasn't there. But I've
not once been attacked and I rarely see a syringe or even a hint of what looks
like poop (statistically, it's probably dog poop given the scourge of terrible
owners of dogs in this city).

So I'm not discounting that _something_ happens _sometimes_ , but damn, not on
the level that the screaming hysterics seem to think it does.

~~~
oceanplexian
I like how we live in a first world country, but yet casually dismiss the fact
that there are homeless people living outside in tents, and that feces and
syringes are only an occasional thing so it's really not so bad. Coming from a
clean, safe neighborhood in New England, where even trash on the side of the
road would be offensive, I feel like we are definitely living in two different
parallel universes.

~~~
techsupporter
I think that's a very disingenuous reading of what I wrote. I was comparing my
personal experience to the hysterics I read on forums like NextDoor and local
Reddit. I did not say that the problem was not a problem, but that some
responses to and perceptions of it are overblown. (Oftentimes, these positions
are used to justify espousing a preference for simply throwing homeless people
in jail for "vagrancy" or involuntarily removing people from the state. So,
yes, in a way, I do find the response to be worse than the actual problem.)

~~~
mdorazio
Not really disingenuous at all - I read your comment the exact same way.

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chaostheory
I don't feel that having more data is a bad thing as long as there's some
transparency and context

~~~
majos
I struggle with this issue. I'm a big fan of the idea of transparency given,
as you point out, context. But many people are _terrible_ at looking for
context, even when it's available. Wherever transparency exists, some
aggregator that will harvest shocking information and divorce it from
explanatory context to drive "engagement" seems not to be far behind. But I
find careful packaging of information for people off-putting as well.

~~~
chaostheory
Maybe we suggest it to companies like Amazon and Nextdoor. They're both HQ'd
in progressive areas and I wouldn't be surprised if they would be open to
hearing about suggestions to tweak their UI to add more context.

------
carrja99
Nextdoor is a gigantic advertisement for Ring and Nest products.

------
beeskneecaps
It is interesting to observe assumptions about the entire network, where one
can only observe a small fraction of the entire network.

A single observation of racism or toxicity causes many observers to assume
their neighborhood is full of casual racism or is completely toxic.

------
sharadov
Nextdoor is comedy gold - from people complaining about teenagers ringing
their doorbell and running away, to reporting "suspicious black males",
someone asking for free lemons. It's hilarious!

~~~
BoorishBears
It's all fun and games until I'm the "suspicious black male" and held at
gunpoint by police because of this foolishness.

------
NikkiA
Meanwhile, the only post on my nextdoor today is a reminder that it's the day
of the year when they get together to repaint and clean up the poorest part of
town as part of a charity event.

 _shrug_

------
malandrew
It's kind of ironic seeing journalists write about this since selling fear is
the primary M.O. of engagement-driven journalism today.

~~~
A2017U1
Sad seeing this comment greyed out, I have friends who are journalists and
they lament this all time.

The media model always had this strain in it on the fringes but now it's
prevalent everywhere in a world of A/B tested headlines and click KPI's rather
than newspapers sold.

~~~
malandrew
As they say "If it bleeds, it leads"

------
garmaine
Nextdoor is particularly rotten. I’ve never signed up but I constantly get
spam emails about what people are talking about in my complex. Click the link
and it brings you to a sign up page.

I will never do business with a company that thinks it’s okay to spam non-
customers like this.

------
throwawaysea
I get the feeling most commenters here don't actually use NextDoor, but have
plenty of opinions about NextDoor that [Vox | Gizmodo Media | Twitter | etc.]
fed them. I have been on NextDoor for years and I almost never see frivolous
complaints or racism. It seems to me that people get this notion based on hit
pieces written by online journalists and by things like the 'best of next
door' Twitter feed, which showcases cherry-picked isolated posts.

Many of the comments here are alleging widespread racism on Next Door, but I
don't agree with the idea that a report about suspicious behavior that
involves a POC is inherently racist. Broadly labeling such reports as racist
is disingenuous and frankly harmful. OTOH, I see plenty of discrimination in
this thread, where people are surmising that NextDoor is "just older white
people" (as another comment put it). For those who don't use NextDoor, they
have a very well-designed workflow when you try to submit a post about a crime
or suspicious activity, where they ask you step by step to isolate what
happened, why that behavior was suspicious, and so forth, before collecting
details on the people involved.

For those saying "I don't see any problems at all, these NextDoor posters are
conspiracy theorists or hysterical fear-mongers" \- maybe that's true for you
but it is definitely not true for me: I've had needles thrown into my front
yard by drug-addicted homeless people. I've been the victim of property crime
and lost irreplaceable possessions. I've had friends physically assaulted,
robbed at knifepoint, caught in the middle of gunfire, and even threatened
with murder in front of their children. I've seen needles in front of my
workplace, in front of stores I go to, and in greenbelts in parks. I encounter
human poop about once a week downtown. These are all real problems that were
absolutely not prevalent 10 years ago in Seattle, and have received limited
press coverage due to our ideologically-skewed demographics + city council +
journalists.

Violent crime is still rare here but on the rise in Seattle. Property crime is
incredibly common, and a lot of it goes unreported because the SPD is not
staffed to handle it and has been directed to de-prioritize investigating it
or directed to not enforce certain laws or directed to not enforce laws
against some groups of people (i.e. homeless). Both Facebook and NextDoor
luckily have given voice to what are very real concerns to law-abiding
residents.

PS: the level of discourse in this thread is appalling. So many people are
using labels (e.g. "NIMBY") or discriminatory remarks ("old white people") to
dismiss others' valid perspectives, values, and opinions. I find this ironic
considering the same posters seemingly uphold the value of "lived experiences"
in other contexts. But more importantly, it seems like lazy comments that
aren't making any actual argument or adding any information are garnering
votes, which is not good for the community.

~~~
fwip
I'm in Seattle too, and NextDoor is mostly frivolous racist complaints. Last
time I used it, a bunch of angry white men were planning to "get their
baseball bats" to "deal with" a homeless guy they suspected of breaking their
car windows. (After the cops told them that they reviewed the camera footage
and didn't think it was that guy).

I, too, have friends in Seattle, and none of them have had any of the
experiences you describe happen to them. I go downtown daily for work for
years, and have seen poop about three times, and discarded needles about the
same number.

The reason you don't like being called a NIMBY is because it's accurate.

~~~
throwawaysea
Do you have evidence to back up your claim that NextDoor is _mostly_ frivolous
racist complaints? How did you determine either “frivolous” or “racist” in
each instance? Did you investigate and verify or invalidate each of the
reports to arrive at a strongly-backed understanding that they were frivolous?
Did you somehow determine that race played a major factor and not suspicious
behavior? I’m betting you don’t have any such data nor any legitimate way to
make those determinations.

> The reason you don't like being called a NIMBY is because it's accurate.

No one likes pejoratives. They add little value to the discussion. It is a
crutch where there is otherwise no sound argument.

~~~
fwip
I used my eyeballs and common sense, same as you.

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shakkhar
Love the Oxford comma in the title :P

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jklinger410
This article is 100% FUD.

For the downvoters, let me summarize.

Social media is bad because people.

Saved you a read.

