Nextdoor uses unpaid volunteers to run its neighborhood communities, with little to no guidance or training. It’s no surprise, then, that black users are feeling less and less safe on the platform. Gordon Strause, its director of community, gave moderators the terrible advice “to take a step back” during Black Lives Matter discussions “as long as [people] expressing their own beliefs and not attacking others”—a recipe for inevitable disaster as some beliefs inherently are attacks on one’s neighbors.
Nextdoor may have launched as an app to “spread the word about a lost dog” or “find a new home for an outgrown bicycle” — and for many, it works pretty well as a hyper-local forum, a more accessible and less spammy alternative to Craigslist — but the company needs to ask itself: how useful is it if black members don’t feel safe on the platform? As the threats of violence and racist posts become increasingly prevalent and dangerous, black users are being forced off the app altogether. What is the value of a community-based social network that excludes people?
Sidebar: neighborhoods also prefer stories about property damage to those about police violence.