
Racial Profiling via Nextdoor.com - kanamekun
http://m.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/racial-profiling-via-nextdoorcom/Content?oid=4526919&showFullText=true
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jcizzle
We recently deactivated our account. We were excited about the idea of being
able to informed of our entire neighborhood, not just our street. Instead, we
found out that in our neighborhood of 8000, there are about 50 crazies that
spend all day posting on Nextdoor, and everyone else had basically given up.
In the real human interactions I have with neighbors, 'How's the weather?' has
been replaced with 'Did you see that Nextdoor post? That was hilarious!'

Some gems in recent memory:

1\. Someone posted an urgent 'BOLO black men with what appears to be a weapon
or something to be used to break in to houses' accompanied by a picture of a
man with a rake. Another neighbor commented, "That's my landscaper and he's
been my landscaper for 10 years".

2\. A heated debate over tearing down old houses and replacing them with
bigger ones ended up with a guy crawling into someone's backyard, taking
pictures of their house, and posting them and critiquing their design choices
on the forum.

3\. A neighbor created a small sculpture of stacked stones, each stone being
about fist-sized. Another neighbor posted photographs and personal
information, asking that he take the stones down, because if they fell on a
kid, he would sue him.

4\. Multiple occurrences where someone posted 'surveillance' video of dog poop
not being cleaned up, which always resulted in another neighbor identifying
the dog owner, and the dog owner almost always being an elderly woman, who
embarrassingly had to indicate she ran out of poop bags but went back later to
clean it up.

~~~
oconnore
Yeah, it's terrible, but deactivating your account is exactly the wrong thing
to do if you're interested in fixing this sort of behavior.

Nextdoor doesn't make people be shitty human beings, but it is a local forum
that augments or replaces the sorts of venues that people used to be shitty in
-- town hall meetings, HOA events, neighborhood watch, political rallies, etc.

Arguing with people on the internet is (heh) usually a waste of time. But
pushing for decency and respect within your neighborhood is not a waste of
time if you value strong communities.

~~~
djtriptych
Nextdoor appears to facilitate neuroses in isolation, which was not the case
with public meetings.

~~~
oconnore
I don't have any data to back it up, but my theory is that Nextdoor allows bad
behavior because people have been trained by millions of comment sections that
confrontation on the internet is fruitless.

That's a misguided instinct when the people you are talking to live two doors
down. Get a handful of people who see them everyday to say, "knock it off",
and they usually will.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It's entirely possible for folks living in the same neighborhood to not
actually see each other all that often, especially not in any sense beyond
waving at each other from across the street.

~~~
amyjess
Yep. I don't even know the names of my neighbors, and I've barely spoken two
words to any of them.

Years ago, I had a couple of neighbors I'd talk to, but they all moved away.
Had a few friends I talked into moving to my complex too, but they've all
moved away as well.

~~~
oconnore
Your community is broken. I'm sorry to hear that.

~~~
puredemo
I know my neighbors and wish I didn't.

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eimai134
This is sad to read. People of every race--black, white, whatever--need to
make an effort to get to know their neighbors. Simply saying hello to people
when you're walking, introducing yourself, pointing out where you live,
telling them about your pets, children, where you work or go to school, where
you moved from, etc., can make a big difference in a community. I used to live
in a very racially diverse apartment complex (more than 50% non-white). I was
friendly with everyone and felt like the people I got to know were almost
friends. Smiling, waving or saying hello to people forms a small bond that
could help these overzealous people realize that if they reach out, they will
see that they are over-reacting. By being friendly and getting to know people,
we can learn that most people are not threats to us, and we can all be united
in watching against the people who really are.

~~~
puredemo
>we can all be united in watching against the people who really are.

Almost like a neighborhood watch, one could say.

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dlandis
I've met some nice neighbors via Nextdoor (and gotten help with some small
things a couple times), but the discussions do tend to degenerate pretty
rapidly (so much for posting under one's real identity having any significant
impact on the quality of discussion...).

But anyway, since I live in a high-crime area, by far the most common type of
post is someone describing how they were just robbed (oftentimes at gunpoint),
or they just saw a car get broken into, etc. It does make me kind of paranoid
since I never would have known about any of those crimes had I not been on the
site. I feel like my other neighbors who don't use it are comparatively
clueless about just how much crime there is even within a few blocks of us. I
guess that could be considered a good or a bad thing.

~~~
puredemo
Isn't knowing better than not knowing? You can prepare accordingly.

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msie
I, along with many other people have come up with the idea of Nextdoor.com and
probably thought of this problem too. Because opening up a site for
comments... Well, it seems that Nextdoor doesn't have a solution either. What
is the purpose of the site if they are hurting the community more than helping
it?

~~~
swsieber
Like most technology tools, nextdoor.com amplifies tendencies already there.
Lower cost of information exchange and actions tends to open up the extremes.
The site in and of itself is not good or bad. But this is definitely an
example of strengthening a bad trait.

~~~
omginternets
Those are some impressive mental gymnastics. Most people would consider
something which amplifies bad traits to be a bad thing.

I agree that the site is probably not _intended_ to be bad, but that's quite a
different claim from yours.

~~~
mc32
It's always a balance, see liberty (of all legal kinds) legal access to
alcohol, etc.

It's about being mature and responsible and learning and mitigating bad
behavior via feedback loops.

~~~
runamok
Exactly. It would be trivial to have a "flag" button that after a certain
amount of "boy cried wolf" complaints Nextdoor either prevents people from
making crime alerts or in some other way throttles them. If this sort of
behavior is causing a ton of user churn Nextdoor needs to get something in
place ASAP.

It could say something like "5 of your neighbors thing you are complaining too
much, but hey, don't shoot the messenger!".

Signal to noise will always be a problem in online communities because of the
one to many nature of them.

~~~
jkyle
> Some groups have even actively silenced and banned the few vocal voices of
> color speaking up on the websites, according to records that I reviewed.

Looks like some kind of process for silencing voices is already present in the
app....it's just mostly being used to silence voices that point out not all
blacks are criminals.

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comrh
I found out about nextdoor.com from reddit. I thought it was so bizarre people
would want their full names, address and sometimes pictures broadcast. I
wanted to see if I could get in with a fake address and name and they do
require you to somehow verify you live there (they mail you a card or you link
it to a phone number) so I just gave up. Lo and behold I get an email the next
week saying my account had been approved anyone because "one of my neighbors
verified I lived there".

~~~
dlandis
If the address is linked to your credit card, then that counts as verification
too. Unfortunately, even if you move and change your CC's address, I don't
think they have a process to remove people (or re-verify them periodically).

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Disruptive_Dave
I've been on Nextdoor for well over two years and have seen literally zero of
these types of communications. Maybe because I'm in a racially diverse area
(North Brooklyn, NYC)? All threads and replies I've ever seen are: mass
transit notifications, crime notifications, lost animals, free junk, stuff for
sale, asking for recommendations for local merchants.

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msie
I've got a social problem - I'll fix it with technology! Now you've got two
problems.

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malyk
This is exactly what happens in my. Sigh irbid on the other side of Oakland
(Golden Gate). There are a few white residents that post suspicious person
posts/images on what seems like every person that walks down the street. I've
turned off all crime alerts on nextdoor because of the absurdity of it.

~~~
monopolemagnet
People whom get outside and actually examined "suspicious behavior" may be
shocked to find normal, harmless people and that it was their own hobgoblins
of their minds criminalizing people based on nothing more than their own
fears, ignorance and prejudices, probably from watching too much TV and
Hollywood movies rather than experiencing the real world.

~~~
MichaelGG
Nextdoor should create a feedback system to incorporate this effect and help
people calibrate. It could also bring in base-rate crime info to help make
more accurate assessments of suspicious reports.

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olefoo
It sounds like this would be a target for some social activist data mining.

Scrape NextDoor, find the people who are posting weirdly racist screeds, and
send a well dressed delegation to their doorstep to let them know that their
name and identifying details will be posted on another site identifying them
as racist bullies if they don't alter their behavior.

Or, scrap the doorstepping and just send an email blast to their employers,
business partners, and facebook contacts.

If nothing else, they'll stop posting to NextDoor.

Yep, it's rude, crude and thoroughly within the reach of any group of
activists that want to get some notoriety. It's also one of those things that
will drive home just how panoptic our society has become.

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ChuckMcM
Sad, I wonder why the neighbors don't know each other better. We found that
organizing block parties was a wonderful way to meet people who have moved in
and share with them experiences and stories. Our neighborhood has gone from
probably 95% white to now 30% Indian, 40% Chinese, and some Russian and
probably the rest typical western european decended whites. Through out that
as people move out and people move in we try to make people feel welcome and
they really do appreciate it.

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ParadigmBlender
I did not have a positive experience with Nextdoor despite being pretty
excited about the service at first. First strike was people posting
spammy/pyramid scheme type sale stuff. My attempts to contact the local admins
did not result in any change. More spam kept being posted.

Strike 2/3, I did not want to reveal my full name when first signing up. One
day I got an email informing me that my account was deleted (not just
suspended) because I did not use a real name. There was no chance for me to
remedy the situation.

Too bad. Anyone know of an alternative?

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MichaelGG
Sort of a weak article - no stats. It'd be much more useful if it simply
stated things clearly. Something like "90% of reports are for Xs, while only
40% of the crimes are by Xs". Or even better, "out of n Xs, only m commit a
crime". Then show incorrect biases there. (The only stat I saw was % of black
population vs % of detainees being black - that's not so relevant without
knowing actual crime rates. )

(Edit: I see why they didn't include this stat. According to [1], over 80% of
suspects for various crimes were black. So that would explain why the police
are pulling over a higher %, right? This still doesn't excuse base rate
fallacy but sort of dismisses the one stat the article does provide.)

Or more usefully, provide better characteristics off which to classify. If
race, gender, and clothing have no predictive power, demonstrate that and show
what does.

Nextdoor could even build priors into the site, over time and help provide
accurate predictions. After all, they have both the suspicious report info
plus the actual crime info. Imagine if it would rate your post: "Based on your
report of a male walking at 6am, the probability this is a criminal is 0.02%"
That'd go a long way towards making people update internal models as well as
making them look silly for using non-predictive characteristics. (Though if
most crimes are committed by young males, it might be called out as ageist and
sexist, but hey if that's reality...)

Plus you could grade individual users. So combining the base rate of crime,
significant characteristics, and past performance of a user? "MaryX, given
your past suspicious activity record, there's a 99% chance this post is
incorrect."

Without this, all it takes is a busybody to report everything they see (and
they can select on anything: race, gender, hair color, shoe size) and
eventually get a correct hit. Then ignore the times they were wrong and point
out how "see I reported this X and it was a thief!"

1: [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Oakland-
crime-...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Oakland-crime-issue-
goes-far-deeper-than-racial-5355633.php)

~~~
arthur_pryor
I like where you go with this in the second half, because I believe that
racial profiling is pragmatically ineffective anyway. But I take issue with
this statement: "If race, gender, and clothing have no predictive power,
demonstrate that and show what does."

I think the burden of proof is on the person using those tools both to show
that they have predictive power, and to show that the action being taken on
that prediction is reasonable.

Put a different way: a couple of principles which I think most Americans
probably believe in are: 1) innocent until proven guilty 2) no guilt by
association (there are laws that allow restrictions on known felons
associating with one another, but at least in that case, the association is
based on convictions for actions the individuals have taken, not assumptions
about a class to which they happen to belong due to who they were born to).

I don't like the idea that someone can look suspicious, without acting
suspiciously. I know there's inevitably a lot of overlap and gray area between
those two things. But what I'm saying is that even if you have some
statistical model which you believe has good predictive power based on inputs
of race and dress, and your model says that scruffy looking black men are more
likely to commit crimes, you still don't get to investigate someone just
because that person's a scruffy looking black guy.

(sidenote: I just noticed this reply sitting unposted in a tab I opened a few
days ago, so this might not even get read, but it was already written, so
whatever.)

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racl101
What a drag this is. It's pathetic that humans always manage to misuse a tool
for evil.

