I had misgivings from the start, but I was getting some good out of it too – notifications from the city, a place to give away free stuff that I wanted to get rid of, occasional interesting good news and neighborhood updates. What that app calls a neighborhood in my city is pretty good-sized, and they kept increasing the number of adjoining neighborhoods that could be included in the posts, so it wasn’t anything cozy or even really neighborly. Some of the things my the posters said (and did) were really cringe-worthy, including their inability to spell or make coherent sentences, but I was able to overlook that for several years.
But at some point a couple of conspiracy theorists started posting all kinds of garbage on it, and a surprising number of my “neighbors” chimed in with how they knew this stuff was true, and anyone who disagreed was shouted down and ignored, and it became a pit. Nextdoor authorities were not interested in anyone posting blatant lies unless it was about Covid-19 or crimes or – there was a 3rd thing that I forget – so there was no appeal. So I got tired of that, and of having Nextdoor make money off of my presence, and I closed my account. There was a place for them to tell me why, but who knows if anyone even reads it.
It’s too bad, it could have been a really useful tool, but the only “moderation” were people called Leads who are untrained and unpaid and many of whom have their own agendas. They could remove any thread or any post without accountability. So the way it was set up was probably doomed to be a failure.
That’s it, really. I’d be interested to see anyone else’s experience with Nextdoor,
I’m going to do the same. It’s worthless and I don’t need to see how stupid my “neighbors” are. One time I read that some whales were in the area, so that was cool. But, mostly, it’s stupid fights about “kids these days” and politics. It certainly reminded me why I never joined facebook.
I used to check mine a lot, but now it’s always lost dogs and that makes me very sad. We don’t have a lot of feuds, so that’s good. I’m not going to close it because if I hear gunshots or helicopters flying over, I can post and usually find out what’s what. It’s mostly crap and garbage, but occasionally useful enough that I’m not going to delete it. But I totally hear you.
For free, you can get all the same benefits from your city’s town hall page on facebook (not affiliated with the city, that’s just what it’s called).
People that can’t form sentences to save their life.
Asking if every loud noise is a gunshot.
A combination of lost dogs and people shaming owners of lost dogs because, of course, if your dog got loose it means you’re a terrible person and deserve to be arrested.
People posting about every kid that walks past their house or any car that drives past their house at any speed under the limit. All the kids and all those cars are just casing the neighborhood, everyone needs to be paying attention.
People complaining about all the cars going ‘well over 90 or 100mph and the police refuse to do anything about it’ (okay, first the police can’t do anything if they’re not aware and second, no one is driving 100mph through your 3 block long subdivision)
Anti-vax and now anti-mask propaganda.
and the list goes on and on and on. It takes everything I have to just sit back and watch the threads play out without jumping in. I have to keep in mind that my family’s business has been here for 40 years. Many of these people, even if I don’t know them, know me (or at least my name) so I really can’t go around ‘correcting’ people or worse, insulting them. It doesn’t take much to get a big group on facebook to decide they’re not going to shop at your place anymore.
Surprisingly, the number of anti-mask and “COVID is a Hoax!” trolls is outnumbered by the sane people on our Nextdoor site. There are still a few loud ones, but they generally get their ass handed to them when they post crap. But, I’m convinced that Nextdoor is a venue for Russian election interference.
The only thing I find it actually useful for is lost pet announcements.
But, the one thing that makes me crazier than the politics is - the people who post every coyote sighting! I mean- it’s freakin’ Phoenix! Coyotes are as common out here as pigeons are in London. There is absolutely no need to mention when you see one - you might as well post that it’s hot today.
We get that too. At least they’re rare here in the Pacific Northwest, but I see a post or two a month about a coyote. What do they expect us to do about it?
ND isn’t too bad yet in my neighborhood. There are definitely too many idiots, but they’re usually jumped all over quickly until the next conspiracy. I see idiots on there maybe once a week. It helps remind me how many idiots are around me, which is pretty depressing. Most of the idiots are repeat idiots.
ND still has enough value to me for area recommendations and wildlife spotting.
Mine is still quite useful. Most of the posts are “know someone who will fix my snowblower?” “teenager looking for any outdoor jobs” and “the library is finally open! yay!” along with random garage sale items. It is a very small community here and I’d say the most typical citizen is either a retired professor or an artisan blacksmith (or an artisan blacksmith who is a retired professor). I’ve very occasionally read the kind of thing you all speak of but they tend to be reproved.
I can’t, apparently, even find out whether they’ve got a group in my area without giving them a whole lot of information first.
My area’s rural and has a fairly high percentage of people who aren’t online at all, so it’s quite possible that there isn’t one. And I’m not going to hand Nextdoor a lot of information if it’s not going to get me anything in return. I can easily understand why they don’t want you posting if you won’t say who you are, and even why they want enough info to check; but I don’t see why they can’t have a publicly-available map showing where groups are active and where they aren’t.
Nextdoor in my neighborhood seems to have a pretty big divide; there’s a cohort of older conservative types who see boogeymen in every shadow and call the cops every time a car backfires nearby, as the criminals are lurking and ready to pounce if you don’t lock up your home like a fortress and festoon it with lights and cameras. They tend to believe whatever Fox news and the politicians say wholeheartedly without any critical thinking.
And there’s a generally younger and more liberal set who aren’t as afraid of everything out there, and who are in general, more skeptical. But they’re also somewhat mush-headed about security type stuff- they’re the idiots who are aghast when they leave their purse in their unlocked car in front of their house for hours, and come back to find it stolen (in a big city… in a suburban area not too far from some low-income, high-crime areas).
Basically I’m just dismayed at the general level of intelligence both sides display; the general thread is that a whole lot more of them than I would have expected just aren’t that bright.
In my neighborhood, coyotes are known for attacking/taking/eating dogs. Generally if you know there’s one in the area, you don’t leave the dog unsupervised in the yard, especially if it’s small.
Mine seems to be mostly people offering to babysit and walk dogs. I mostly ignore it, but I did check frequently back in late May, early June when we were having lots of riots/looting/demonstrations in the area.
They’ve been killing many of the neighborhood cats and leaving them strewn around the area. Big problem over by the Arboretum. There are a couple coyotes that roam my neighborhood, and people have posted photos of one just a few doors down from me. My cat now stays mostly indoors unless I’m with it outside.
I signed up a few years ago to advertise a garage sale. I found that the “mute” function and waiting for the daily email summaries makes it much more useful and weeds out all the crap. The good… Lost pets (I helped someone get their escaped bird back), used items (unlike craigslist, I’ve never encountered a flake or scammer on Nextdoor), local business recommendations (“anyone know a good electrician?”), some community notices, and local items of interest (“there’s a pod of dolphins at the beach - here’s pictures”)
The bad… one-trick pony community activists. My first “mute” was some one opposed to a planned development. That’s fine, but she spammed Nextdoor with similar screeds 10 times a day for a month before I blocked her. About a year later I saw threads mentioning she was finally banned for being a one-trick pony. Another guy would post daily “proofs” that street sweeping was just a revenue scam and didn’t help the environment and the signs are ugly. Dude, just shut up, pay the ticket and move your damn car next week.
We also have the city council member who posts obviously biased polls claiming he’s taking the community’s pulse. “Do you support the BLM thugs protesting at city hall? Or do you want to fellate every police officer you meet?”
And the people who have to post a video every single time a person of color walks down the sidewalk in front of their Ring camera.
Overall, I can use the good, ignore the bad, and be dismayed at just how many of my neighbors are idiots.
A running theme on my Nextdoor group is that anyone who drives through the neighborhood kind of slowly is definitely suspicious and is certainly casing the neighborhood. There was one such thread with dozens of replies along the lines of “OMG that sounds fishy! Definitely report him to the police!” He turned out to be the newspaper delivery guy.
On the COVID/mask wearing issue, it seems equally divided between the “COVID is a hoax” conspiracy theorists, and people shaming people for not wearing masks. I think both are equally annoying – while I’m definitely pro-mask, I think shaming those who don’t wear them is counter productive.
There are still a decent number of “Can anyone recommend a good handyman” type posts.
I think it’s funny (and this is on facebook) how often those kinds of posts pop up and get a dozen replies. Certainly even the people that make the post know 6 other people have asked the same questions (and got the same answers) just in the last few weeks. It’s not difficult to scroll down or search the page.
What bugs me is when someone’s entire post is just “Need a handyman?”. Like…are you looking for recommendations or offering your services? Full sentences seem to be a real struggle for some people.
I got off of Nextdoor a long time ago however our newish subdivision with a lot of older folks started their own private Facebook group for our neighborhood. When it became nothing but “anybody hear that siren? what’s going on?”, “suspicious kids walking down middle of street, anybody know who they are?”, “did anybody hear that loud bang?”, etc. I just started responding with an image of Gladys Kravitz.
They eventually kicked me out of their group.
My wife is a neighborhood lead on nextdoor. I’m not sure what she does with it, other than sometimes exchange garden plants with neighbors.
Our nextdoor is mostly the mundane, so I rarely read it: for sale, some rusty junk; I’m recommending these roofers, because they’ll give me 10% off if I do; does anybody have a good electrician (x2); lost dog from 6 months ago, why is this at the top of my feed?; etc.
The one that really stands out as bad, and I did check for a reason went like this:
What’s that smoke?
– I see it too (x10)
– It’s a grass fire at the park, the fire departments is on the scene and it is mostly contained, here are some pictures.
– I heard it’s a house on fire
– I heard kids are setting cars on fire
– I heard it’s a drug operation that exploded
– I heard one of the fracking sites exploded (six hours later)
– I don’t see any smoke
– It was a drug operation that exploded, but it’s cleaned up now