If you live in the US and a few other countries, you may have joined the group known as Nextdoor. It is a place where people can share information about their neighborhoods and get to know what is going on locally. Most of the time it involves lost and found pets, petty crimes, alerts, and requests for information and assistance. In that respect, it is useful and can serve to bring people in a community together around common interests. But as Andrew Anthony writes, like all social media, it has a dark side with people voicing stereotypical views.

In America, Nextdoor has been accused of racial profiling and creating an atmosphere, as one mayor put it, of “paranoid hysteria”. In a country where black males have been shot for entering white neighbourhoods, such accusations are not to be dismissed.

Nextdoor responded to the criticism with more detailed guidelines and an increased number of volunteer moderators. But neither development has quashed the belief in some circles that the platform is routinely used as a means to pit the white and wealthy against the black and the poor.

In reality, most postings on the platform have little or nothing to do with issues of crime or race. Missing cats, piano teaching or reliable drain-cleaners are the usual fare. It’s the place to go to when you want to give away household items, and during Covid restrictions it was frequently used to identify vulnerable neighbours and organise help.

In reality, most postings on the platform have little or nothing to do with issues of crime or race. Missing cats, piano teaching or reliable drain-cleaners are the usual fare. It’s the place to go to when you want to give away household items, and during Covid restrictions it was frequently used to identify vulnerable neighbours and organise help.
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But the tone shifts to one of urban embattlement when the subject switches, as it frequently does, to crime. Reading through the notices it’s not hard to gain the impression that there is a malevolent army out there, working day and night to breach your security and walk off with your property.
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Of course, local papers used to be the medium through which people were alerted to crimes in their locality. Despite vivid, sometimes lurid, reports, they were and are constrained by journalistic guidelines, libel law and sub judice. In a way, social media networks like Nextdoor have replaced the role of local papers, delivering news almost as it happens, with instantaneous, unedited feedback.
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It has been claimed in America that Nextdoor is most active in neighbourhoods not badly afflicted by crime, but in which there is an exaggerated fear of it. The company maintains that the network is used across all communities. Whatever the truth, a healthy community steadfastness against crime is easily parlayed into hostility towards strangers, outsiders, minorities, the poor and the mentally ill.

I definitely pick up a class vibe in the postings. Not always, of course, but usually when there is mention of a crime or about ‘suspicious’ characters being seen.

As is the case with most comment threads, it can quickly go off the rails. Just today on my local Nextdoor site, someone posted an announcement of a pro-choice rally, giving the time and place, and inviting people to attend. That was it, just information about the event. Of course, the poster was pro-choice but she did not make any arguments in favor of it. But the comments immediately got into the debate over abortion, rehashing the usual arguments, and it became heated with God inevitably being invoked.