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Nextdoor can bring communities together — but crime and abuse can also grow in online neighbourhood groups

8 min read

When Pip the cat recently went missing in the suburbs of London, it was the crucial help of an app – and some supernatural skills – that found him.

Pip’s owner had asked her neighbours for help on the social network Nextdoor, and among their recommendations was to try Becky Willoughby’s “psychic pet-location service”. Somehow, it worked. Thanking her new friends, the woman wrote how Willoughby “led me to the house where he was above the front door”, adding: “It’s been stressful but it’s been wonderful getting to know more of my neighbours.”

“From Milan to Copenhagen to London, pets are ubiquitous on the app,” says Nick Lisher, who runs Nextdoor in the UK. The platform, which launched in America in 2011, is similar to Facebook but focuses on connecting people who live nearby, allowing them to do anything from recommending a plumber to sharing a petition against a new one-way-system in local towns.

It can be hugely useful. But, just like on Facebook, innocent chats can escalate into rows.

Of course, loving thy neighbour has been a challenge for centuries. Rows about everything from 25ft buddleias to arson attempts have been at the centre of newspaper stories, soap operas and fly-on-the-wall TV series such as Channel 5’s The Nightmare Neighbour Next Door.

Giving these real-life conflicts a new place to develop and grow online means that Nextdoor’s moderators have their work cut out.

Nick Lisher, who leads Nextdoor in the UK (Photo: Tim Whitby/Nextdoor)
Nick Lisher, who leads Nextdoor in the UK (Photo: Tim Whitby/Nextdoor)

Good neighbours make good friends

During the pandemic, however, online community groups – on Whatsapp and email as well as Lisher’s platform – have become important to many people. Usage of Nextdoor jumped by 80 per cent at the peak of coronavirus, and there were 15 times more groups on the app in the days after the pandemic took hold, with people discussing how to help each other and support local businesses.

Rashida, who lives in Hertfordshire, says her grandmother’s local group in Nottingham has been “a lifesaver, as the neighbours have kept her well looked after in lockdown”.

Last month, a carer wrote on Nextdoor that Harry, the man she looks after, was about to turn 100 and was feeling low about being stuck indoors in locked-down Surrey.

The message read: “He’s not in great health, depressed, he’s going to be stuck in and lonely. Can’t get to the pub! Not happy with Boris! Wondering if anyone would send a card to show him the good social media can do! And make it special. I feel so sorry for him, a war veteran, one of the most humble, clever, brave people I’ve ever met.”

When Harry woke up on his 100th birthday, he had more than 160 cards – plus some cakes – from neighbours, the local school, a nearby police station and the football club he has supported since he was a boy, Millwall. Harry said he was “dumbfounded”.

Nextdoor has been used during the Covid-19 pandemic to help people who are self-isolating (Photo: ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images)
Nextdoor has been used during the Covid-19 pandemic to help people who are self-isolating (Photo: ERIC BARADAT/AFP/Getty)

Crime and punishment

Some people use local groups and networks to help stop others become victims of scams they have fallen for. But a Buzzfeed investigation in the US last year documented how Nextdoor can itself become a “Petri dish for low-level crime” – from people claiming on the app to be builders before disappearing with clients’ deposits, to a woman who stole the identity of a user who was a nanny to dupe multiple families.

Well-intentioned acts of solidarity can risk spiralling out of control and proportion. Take the person who posted that they would be boycotting a local restaurant after seeing them treating a delivery driver in an “absolutely disgusting” way. This prompted outraged posts from other locals. “We won’t be buying from here any more!” said one. “Let’s hit ’em where it hurts!” One subjective account could lead to a business being blacklisted by customers overnight without them ever knowing how or why.

In this sense, Nextdoor is a hyper-local combination of consumer watchdog and Neighbourhood Watch. Where before you might have had a friendly neighbour to keep an eye out if they spot someone suspicious outside your front door while you’re on holiday, Nextdoor can be like having dozens of hawk-eyed neighbours, for better or for worse.

Jason, who lives in Oxfordshire, was alerted to a mystery manure fly-tipper who was “dumping huge mounds of horse shit in the front gardens of a very wealthy road in the area”. Several weeks later, warnings were being shared of “a door-to-door fish salesman who was using the opportunity to case people’s homes”.

Police have also begun using the app, posting about crime trends and asking for local advice about what they should focus on. But it can also encourage vigilantism that can range from the intrusive to the potentially life-destroying.

Sarah, who lives in South London, was shocked when she saw someone sharing a video from their home security camera telling neighbours to beware of a man who called at the door, opened the letterbox with a wooden spoon and quickly went away. “It was crystal clear when you watched it that the poor innocent guy was delivering leaflets. You could even see him reach in his pocket for the next one, and the wooden spoon was so the letterboxes didn’t ‘bite’ his hand. Now his face has been plastered over Nextdoor. Libel, surely?”

Fast facts: Nextdoor

Nextdoor was founded in 2008 in San Francisco. In May 2019 the app was valued at $2.1bn (£1.6bn).

Sarah Friar, chief executive officer of Nextdoor.com Inc (Photo: Patrick T Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Sarah Friar, chief executive officer of Nextdoor.com Inc (Photo: Patrick T Fallon/Bloomberg/Getty)

Nextdoor came to Britain in 2017 after it acquired the UK local social network service Streetlife in a multimillion-pound deal. The company makes money from adverts and collaborations with local businesses that sponsor threads and offer coupons.

The app has 260,000 neighbourhoods in 11 countries, and reportedly more than 10 million registered users.

Knowing just six neighbours reduces the likelihood of feeling lonely and is linked to lowering depression, social anxiety and financial concerns, according to a study from the University of Manchester and academics around the world working with Nextdoor.

Unfair treatment

In Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, the journalist talks to people who have had their worlds ruined by online witch hunts like this. “With social media,” he writes, “we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain.”

Many people are trolled by strangers on social media, but what must it like to get this kind of treatment from the people on your own road?

A Nextdoor user in Oakham, East Midlands, tells i how last month someone alerted their street to a “stranger” pacing “oddly” up and down the road. It turned out that this person had lived on the street for 20 years and was just pacing after a spectacularly stressful day.

Another user speaks of her concern when a photo of a woman, who appeared to have severe mental health issues, was posted on the app – and in another neighbourhood, pictures were posted of a couple having sex in a car.

Problems with racism

In some areas of the United States, the app has been accused of becoming a hotbed of racial stereotypes, with claims of users reporting “dodgy” or “sketchy” black people with no reason to suspect any wrongdoing.

According to its community guidelines Nextdoor prohibits discrimination and hate speech on its platform. But following complaints about racial profiling, the app discontinued a feature that had allowed users to forward their crime and safety posts to police.

Ajani*, a Nextdoor user in Northampton, recently saw a post asking if anyone had seen “the suspicious-looking black man often seen in this area”. It turned out he was simply a new resident.

When racism is pernicious and pervasive in real life, it is an inevitable problem for online communities to deal with – so what can be done?

On the UK version, Nextdoor users can now only mention someone’s ethnicity when reporting them if they also detail two other things about them – and according to Lisher: “We do have to do more moderation than some other platforms.”

Too much information?

While it can be helpful for communities to share information, does this also make us worry more, or unnecessarily, about problems that have always existed or are beyond our control? “We used to live in happy ignorance of neighbourhood crime,” says one Londoner, “but now every incident is marked with a ‘Neighbours beware!’ post. Some are break-ins, which are depressing and not particularly helpful.”

Peter, an intermittent Nextdoor user, says: “The local police report at least weekly on local crime (catalytic converter theft seems to be the thing at the moment) – I’m not sure how reassuring that is.”

Zara lives in Manchester. She deleted Nextdoor after she got a notification at midnight from someone saying they thought they saw someone looking through her window. That was the sort of local information she could do without if she ever wanted to sleep again.

Many of us are drawn to crime stories, so no wonder the subjects of the last few Nextdoor email roundups in one area of north London are “Impersonator of meter-reader cut the wires to our security lights”, “Returned overnight to steal my bike”, “Old woman punching people on the old parkland walk”, “Weapon sweeps”, “Knife arches”. Spend too long reading about burglaries and scammers nearby, and you might feel you know too much.

The positive benefits

Yet there is also a lot of hope to be found in the outpouring of philanthropy by neighbours connecting in the tiniest villages and the biggest cities.

In Edinburgh, Alistair Watson used his two 3D printers to start printing protective face shields for frontline health workers. He’d had to close his business, had no income and had furloughed his staff, so he asked via Nextdoor if anyone would be able to donate a roll of filament to help him make the shields. In the end he and his volunteers were able to send out over 1,500 face shields to charities, care homes and hospitals across Scotland.

When lockdown began, there was a 382 per cent increase in the app’s users talking about helping each other.

Lisher feels that while some media outlets focus on how divided we are, we have more in common with each other than we might think. “We might have voted differently in the EU referendum, but we are likely to agree that we need to improve the local school.”

And perhaps another important role that the app plays is too easily forgotten: how it can keep people entertained.

One user says it was a highlight of her week when she read this post from a neighbour: “To the lady in the black Ford Focus on the high street who gave me the finger when I rang my bike bell at her – your handbag was on the roof of your car. Karma has no deadline.”

*Name changed at interviewee’s request

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