âThere is this automatic fear or suspicion of anyone different, and it was validated by all these neighbors." That's how Oakland Nextdoor user Monica Bien recently described her experience on the site to the New York Times. Nextdoorâa site where posters can share information with others in their immediate neighborhoodâhas faced criticism, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, for the way users can post about people they believe look "suspicious." (The East Bay Express wrote last year about the way racial profiling on the site was affecting people of color there.)
âIt was like the bias was so insidious," Bien continued to the Times, "and somehow the online community allows them to say what they have been thinking all along but not saying.â
Here in Seattle, Nextdoor has been ground zero for neighborhood organizing to complain about crime and homeless people, particularly in neighborhoods north of the ship canal. The Seattle Police Department has hosted a "town hall" meeting on the site. And earlier this year, the site temporarily kicked off local blogger Erica C. Barnett after she published anti-homeless comments users made on the site, which is designed to be closed to anyone who doesn't live in the neighborhood. In response, Mayor Ed Murray told Barnett "some individuals were working themselves into a paranoid hysteria" on the site.
NYT:
Law enforcement officials said the postings could lead to a kind of echo chamber and prompt residents to call the police with false alarms. The officials also said they were wary of being tied to accusations of racial profiling when they are under scrutiny over the way they deal with minority communities.
âAnytime someone is asking us to respond to a supposed crime threat based on assumptions, weâre worried about wasting resources and alienating others,â said Lt. Chris Bolton, the Oakland police officer who manages the Police Departmentâs social media accounts. âWe have to get people to understand what is a real suspicion.â
In response to ongoing complaints, the Times reports that Nextdoor will soon require users to use descriptions of clothing or "some other identifying markers beyond race" when reporting someone as suspicious.