7 ms·

Racial Profiling via Nextdoor.com

64 points by kanamekun 11y ago

msie 11y ago
I, along with many other people have come up with the idea of Nextdoor.com and probably thought of this problem too. Because opening up a site for comments... Well, it seems that Nextdoor doesn't have a solution either. What is the purpose of the site if they are hurting the community more than helping it?
- swsieber 11y ago
  Like most technology tools, nextdoor.com amplifies tendencies already there. Lower cost of information exchange and actions tends to open up the extremes. The site in and of itself is not good or bad. But this is definitely an example of strengthening a bad trait.
  - omginternets 11y ago
    Those are some impressive mental gymnastics. Most people would consider something which amplifies bad traits to be a bad thing. I agree that the site is probably not intended to be bad, but that's quite a different claim from yours.
    - mc32 11y ago
      It's always a balance, see liberty (of all legal kinds) legal access to alcohol, etc. It's about being mature and responsible and learning and mitigating bad behavior via feedback loops.
      - runamok 11y ago
        Exactly. It would be trivial to have a "flag" button that after a certain amount of "boy cried wolf" complaints Nextdoor either prevents people from making crime alerts or in some other way throttles them. If this sort of behavior is causing a ton of user churn Nextdoor needs to get something in place ASAP. It could say something like "5 of your neighbors thing you are complaining too much, but hey, don't shoot the messenger!". Signal to noise will always be a problem in online communities because of the one to many nature of them.
        jkyle 11y ago
        > Some groups have even actively silenced and banned the few vocal voices of color speaking up on the websites, according to records that I reviewed. Looks like some kind of process for silencing voices is already present in the app....it's just mostly being used to silence voices that point out not all blacks are criminals.
    - gluelogic 11y ago
      "Most people would consider something which amplifies bad traits to be a bad thing." This is only true if a thing _only_ amplifies bad traits.
      - omginternets 11y ago
        This is a fair point, but in the present context, it seems like the claim is that nextdoor.com is _only_ amplifying bad traits. At the very least, it seems like the present claim implies that bad traits are eclipsing the good ones. The reason I think this matters is because tech evangelism has a worrying tenancy to write problems off as existing prior to the technology, without honestly evaluating whether or not the technology is responsible exacerbating the problem.
    - res0nat0r 11y ago
      I guess I just live in a less racist neighborhood. I've experienced none of these problems and Nextdoor is very useful for myself and my neighbors. Blame the idiots living in the neighborhoods posting these comments, not Nextdoor.
      - rootedbox 11y ago
        What neighborhood are you in?
    - swsieber 11y ago
      That's a very good point. I think I phrased it that way because I believe it's part of a bigger issue at hand - namely that we have all these things reinforcing our bad habits and bad traits, and we don't really pay attention to it since it's so ubiquitous. I can't think of many technological solutions to these types of problems - I say that because trying to ban those types of software generally is like playing whack-a-mole. You get rid of one and another one pops up. The real solution is that people have to police themselves when interacting with technology - being judicious. I wish there was a good way to make that part of our culture. Reading "Here Comes Everybody" is what inspired this line of though in me. Edit: Especially since reading through the rest of the article: what's happening on NextDoor was happening on other sites: email groups and yahoo groups. I think there's bigger hubbub about next door because it's more visible.
jcizzle 11y ago
We recently deactivated our account. We were excited about the idea of being able to informed of our entire neighborhood, not just our street. Instead, we found out that in our neighborhood of 8000, there are about 50 crazies that spend all day posting on Nextdoor, and everyone else had basically given up. In the real human interactions I have with neighbors, 'How's the weather?' has been replaced with 'Did you see that Nextdoor post? That was hilarious!' Some gems in recent memory: 1. Someone posted an urgent 'BOLO black men with what appears to be a weapon or something to be used to break in to houses' accompanied by a picture of a man with a rake. Another neighbor commented, "That's my landscaper and he's been my landscaper for 10 years". 2. A heated debate over tearing down old houses and replacing them with bigger ones ended up with a guy crawling into someone's backyard, taking pictures of their house, and posting them and critiquing their design choices on the forum. 3. A neighbor created a small sculpture of stacked stones, each stone being about fist-sized. Another neighbor posted photographs and personal information, asking that he take the stones down, because if they fell on a kid, he would sue him. 4. Multiple occurrences where someone posted 'surveillance' video of dog poop not being cleaned up, which always resulted in another neighbor identifying the dog owner, and the dog owner almost always being an elderly woman, who embarrassingly had to indicate she ran out of poop bags but went back later to clean it up.
- cafard 11y ago
  Part one sort of sounds like my neighborhood list serve in Washington, DC.
- adevine 11y ago
  I had a similar experience. I don't understand how people find use out of Nextdoor - the signal to noise ratio (where "noise" is borderline crazy people) is just way too low. When I used it, I was instantly reminded of that Far Side cartoon where God is sprinkling "Jerks" onto the Earth, thinking "And just to keep things interesting..."
  - lsniddy 11y ago
    http://collectionofawesome.com/2012/04/05/farside-comic-jerks/ http://collectionofawesome.com/2012/04/05/farside-comic-jerk...
malyk 11y ago
This is exactly what happens in my. Sigh irbid on the other side of Oakland (Golden Gate). There are a few white residents that post suspicious person posts/images on what seems like every person that walks down the street. I've turned off all crime alerts on nextdoor because of the absurdity of it.
- monopolemagnet 11y ago
  People whom get outside and actually examined "suspicious behavior" may be shocked to find normal, harmless people and that it was their own hobgoblins of their minds criminalizing people based on nothing more than their own fears, ignorance and prejudices, probably from watching too much TV and Hollywood movies rather than experiencing the real world.
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    Nextdoor should create a feedback system to incorporate this effect and help people calibrate. It could also bring in base-rate crime info to help make more accurate assessments of suspicious reports.
eimai134 11y ago
This is sad to read. People of every race--black, white, whatever--need to make an effort to get to know their neighbors. Simply saying hello to people when you're walking, introducing yourself, pointing out where you live, telling them about your pets, children, where you work or go to school, where you moved from, etc., can make a big difference in a community. I used to live in a very racially diverse apartment complex (more than 50% non-white). I was friendly with everyone and felt like the people I got to know were almost friends. Smiling, waving or saying hello to people forms a small bond that could help these overzealous people realize that if they reach out, they will see that they are over-reacting. By being friendly and getting to know people, we can learn that most people are not threats to us, and we can all be united in watching against the people who really are.
- puredemo 11y ago
  >we can all be united in watching against the people who really are. Almost like a neighborhood watch, one could say.
racl101 11y ago
What a drag this is. It's pathetic that humans always manage to misuse a tool for evil.
comrh 11y ago
I found out about nextdoor.com from reddit. I thought it was so bizarre people would want their full names, address and sometimes pictures broadcast. I wanted to see if I could get in with a fake address and name and they do require you to somehow verify you live there (they mail you a card or you link it to a phone number) so I just gave up. Lo and behold I get an email the next week saying my account had been approved anyone because "one of my neighbors verified I lived there".
- dlandis 11y ago
  If the address is linked to your credit card, then that counts as verification too. Unfortunately, even if you move and change your CC's address, I don't think they have a process to remove people (or re-verify them periodically).
dlandis 11y ago
I've met some nice neighbors via Nextdoor (and gotten help with some small things a couple times), but the discussions do tend to degenerate pretty rapidly (so much for posting under one's real identity having any significant impact on the quality of discussion...). But anyway, since I live in a high-crime area, by far the most common type of post is someone describing how they were just robbed (oftentimes at gunpoint), or they just saw a car get broken into, etc. It does make me kind of paranoid since I never would have known about any of those crimes had I not been on the site. I feel like my other neighbors who don't use it are comparatively clueless about just how much crime there is even within a few blocks of us. I guess that could be considered a good or a bad thing.
- puredemo 11y ago
  Isn't knowing better than not knowing? You can prepare accordingly.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
I've been on Nextdoor for well over two years and have seen literally zero of these types of communications. Maybe because I'm in a racially diverse area (North Brooklyn, NYC)? All threads and replies I've ever seen are: mass transit notifications, crime notifications, lost animals, free junk, stuff for sale, asking for recommendations for local merchants.
MichaelGG 11y ago
Sort of a weak article - no stats. It'd be much more useful if it simply stated things clearly. Something like "90% of reports are for Xs, while only 40% of the crimes are by Xs". Or even better, "out of n Xs, only m commit a crime". Then show incorrect biases there. (The only stat I saw was % of black population vs % of detainees being black - that's not so relevant without knowing actual crime rates. ) (Edit: I see why they didn't include this stat. According to [1], over 80% of suspects for various crimes were black. So that would explain why the police are pulling over a higher %, right? This still doesn't excuse base rate fallacy but sort of dismisses the one stat the article does provide.) Or more usefully, provide better characteristics off which to classify. If race, gender, and clothing have no predictive power, demonstrate that and show what does. Nextdoor could even build priors into the site, over time and help provide accurate predictions. After all, they have both the suspicious report info plus the actual crime info. Imagine if it would rate your post: "Based on your report of a male walking at 6am, the probability this is a criminal is 0.02%" That'd go a long way towards making people update internal models as well as making them look silly for using non-predictive characteristics. (Though if most crimes are committed by young males, it might be called out as ageist and sexist, but hey if that's reality...) Plus you could grade individual users. So combining the base rate of crime, significant characteristics, and past performance of a user? "MaryX, given your past suspicious activity record, there's a 99% chance this post is incorrect." Without this, all it takes is a busybody to report everything they see (and they can select on anything: race, gender, hair color, shoe size) and eventually get a correct hit. Then ignore the times they were wrong and point out how "see I reported this X and it was a thief!" 1: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Oakland-crime-issue-goes-far-deeper-than-racial-5355633.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Oakland-crime-...
- arthur_pryor 11y ago
  I like where you go with this in the second half, because I believe that racial profiling is pragmatically ineffective anyway. But I take issue with this statement: "If race, gender, and clothing have no predictive power, demonstrate that and show what does." I think the burden of proof is on the person using those tools both to show that they have predictive power, and to show that the action being taken on that prediction is reasonable. Put a different way: a couple of principles which I think most Americans probably believe in are: 1) innocent until proven guilty 2) no guilt by association (there are laws that allow restrictions on known felons associating with one another, but at least in that case, the association is based on convictions for actions the individuals have taken, not assumptions about a class to which they happen to belong due to who they were born to). I don't like the idea that someone can look suspicious, without acting suspiciously. I know there's inevitably a lot of overlap and gray area between those two things. But what I'm saying is that even if you have some statistical model which you believe has good predictive power based on inputs of race and dress, and your model says that scruffy looking black men are more likely to commit crimes, you still don't get to investigate someone just because that person's a scruffy looking black guy. (sidenote: I just noticed this reply sitting unposted in a tab I opened a few days ago, so this might not even get read, but it was already written, so whatever.)
ChuckMcM 11y ago
Sad, I wonder why the neighbors don't know each other better. We found that organizing block parties was a wonderful way to meet people who have moved in and share with them experiences and stories. Our neighborhood has gone from probably 95% white to now 30% Indian, 40% Chinese, and some Russian and probably the rest typical western european decended whites. Through out that as people move out and people move in we try to make people feel welcome and they really do appreciate it.
ParadigmBlender 11y ago
I did not have a positive experience with Nextdoor despite being pretty excited about the service at first. First strike was people posting spammy/pyramid scheme type sale stuff. My attempts to contact the local admins did not result in any change. More spam kept being posted. Strike 2/3, I did not want to reveal my full name when first signing up. One day I got an email informing me that my account was deleted (not just suspended) because I did not use a real name. There was no chance for me to remedy the situation. Too bad. Anyone know of an alternative?
olefoo 11y ago
It sounds like this would be a target for some social activist data mining. Scrape NextDoor, find the people who are posting weirdly racist screeds, and send a well dressed delegation to their doorstep to let them know that their name and identifying details will be posted on another site identifying them as racist bullies if they don't alter their behavior. Or, scrap the doorstepping and just send an email blast to their employers, business partners, and facebook contacts. If nothing else, they'll stop posting to NextDoor. Yep, it's rude, crude and thoroughly within the reach of any group of activists that want to get some notoriety. It's also one of those things that will drive home just how panoptic our society has become.
necessity 11y ago
Can you blame them? Most criminals are in fact black (which is not to say they are criminals because they are black, it's just a statistical fact). Moreover, it is all about looks. Dress like some gangster and you'll get bad looks from people. I bet no one gives the looks to a black man on a suit.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  > I bet no one gives the looks to a black man on a suit. You mean like a work uniform, like the kind a mail carrier would typically wear, that is mentioned specifically in the article?
  - steveeq1 11y ago
    I think he said "suit", not that I necessarily agree with his opinion.
- matthewmacleod 11y ago
  If you feel the need to spout this racist nonsense, at least get your facts right. The vast majority of criminals in the US are white - https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-43 https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/...
  - steveeq1 11y ago
    Are you sure this is accurate? Blacks account for over 50% of homicides despite being 14% of the population: http://i.imgur.com/tOTcCRH.jpg http://i.imgur.com/tOTcCRH.jpg I'm not saying "all blacks commit crime", but statistically it seems that black crime is disproportionate for their numbers.
    - matthewmacleod 11y ago
      Yes, I'm sure it's accurate, assuming we're talking about the US. Didn't you read the source I supplied? It's quite clearly stated there, and I'm fairly sure the FBI's numbers are accurate. The graph you linked to doesn't say what you claim it does – although it does point out the extent of intraracial crime in the black community. Despite that, you are correct that people identifying as "Black or African American" are about 52% of homicide arrests. That's an entirely different statistic. The fact remains: whatever ethnic bias exists within crime figures, the statement "Most criminals are in fact black" is categorically incorrect, and basically the epitome of crass, racist statements.
msie 11y ago
I've got a social problem - I'll fix it with technology! Now you've got two problems.

64 points by kanamekun 11y ago

msie 11y ago

I, along with many other people have come up with the idea of Nextdoor.com and probably thought of this problem too. Because opening up a site for comments... Well, it seems that Nextdoor doesn't have a solution either. What is the purpose of the site if they are hurting the community more than helping it?

swsieber 11y ago
Like most technology tools, nextdoor.com amplifies tendencies already there. Lower cost of information exchange and actions tends to open up the extremes. The site in and of itself is not good or bad. But this is definitely an example of strengthening a bad trait.
- omginternets 11y ago
  Those are some impressive mental gymnastics. Most people would consider something which amplifies bad traits to be a bad thing. I agree that the site is probably not intended to be bad, but that's quite a different claim from yours.
  - mc32 11y ago
    It's always a balance, see liberty (of all legal kinds) legal access to alcohol, etc. It's about being mature and responsible and learning and mitigating bad behavior via feedback loops.
    - runamok 11y ago
      Exactly. It would be trivial to have a "flag" button that after a certain amount of "boy cried wolf" complaints Nextdoor either prevents people from making crime alerts or in some other way throttles them. If this sort of behavior is causing a ton of user churn Nextdoor needs to get something in place ASAP. It could say something like "5 of your neighbors thing you are complaining too much, but hey, don't shoot the messenger!". Signal to noise will always be a problem in online communities because of the one to many nature of them.
      - jkyle 11y ago
        > Some groups have even actively silenced and banned the few vocal voices of color speaking up on the websites, according to records that I reviewed. Looks like some kind of process for silencing voices is already present in the app....it's just mostly being used to silence voices that point out not all blacks are criminals.
  - gluelogic 11y ago
    "Most people would consider something which amplifies bad traits to be a bad thing." This is only true if a thing _only_ amplifies bad traits.
    - omginternets 11y ago
      This is a fair point, but in the present context, it seems like the claim is that nextdoor.com is _only_ amplifying bad traits. At the very least, it seems like the present claim implies that bad traits are eclipsing the good ones. The reason I think this matters is because tech evangelism has a worrying tenancy to write problems off as existing prior to the technology, without honestly evaluating whether or not the technology is responsible exacerbating the problem.
  - res0nat0r 11y ago
    I guess I just live in a less racist neighborhood. I've experienced none of these problems and Nextdoor is very useful for myself and my neighbors. Blame the idiots living in the neighborhoods posting these comments, not Nextdoor.
    - rootedbox 11y ago
      What neighborhood are you in?
  - swsieber 11y ago
    That's a very good point. I think I phrased it that way because I believe it's part of a bigger issue at hand - namely that we have all these things reinforcing our bad habits and bad traits, and we don't really pay attention to it since it's so ubiquitous. I can't think of many technological solutions to these types of problems - I say that because trying to ban those types of software generally is like playing whack-a-mole. You get rid of one and another one pops up. The real solution is that people have to police themselves when interacting with technology - being judicious. I wish there was a good way to make that part of our culture. Reading "Here Comes Everybody" is what inspired this line of though in me. Edit: Especially since reading through the rest of the article: what's happening on NextDoor was happening on other sites: email groups and yahoo groups. I think there's bigger hubbub about next door because it's more visible.

jcizzle 11y ago

We recently deactivated our account. We were excited about the idea of being able to informed of our entire neighborhood, not just our street. Instead, we found out that in our neighborhood of 8000, there are about 50 crazies that spend all day posting on Nextdoor, and everyone else had basically given up. In the real human interactions I have with neighbors, 'How's the weather?' has been replaced with 'Did you see that Nextdoor post? That was hilarious!' Some gems in recent memory: 1. Someone posted an urgent 'BOLO black men with what appears to be a weapon or something to be used to break in to houses' accompanied by a picture of a man with a rake. Another neighbor commented, "That's my landscaper and he's been my landscaper for 10 years". 2. A heated debate over tearing down old houses and replacing them with bigger ones ended up with a guy crawling into someone's backyard, taking pictures of their house, and posting them and critiquing their design choices on the forum. 3. A neighbor created a small sculpture of stacked stones, each stone being about fist-sized. Another neighbor posted photographs and personal information, asking that he take the stones down, because if they fell on a kid, he would sue him. 4. Multiple occurrences where someone posted 'surveillance' video of dog poop not being cleaned up, which always resulted in another neighbor identifying the dog owner, and the dog owner almost always being an elderly woman, who embarrassingly had to indicate she ran out of poop bags but went back later to clean it up.

cafard 11y ago
Part one sort of sounds like my neighborhood list serve in Washington, DC.
adevine 11y ago
I had a similar experience. I don't understand how people find use out of Nextdoor - the signal to noise ratio (where "noise" is borderline crazy people) is just way too low. When I used it, I was instantly reminded of that Far Side cartoon where God is sprinkling "Jerks" onto the Earth, thinking "And just to keep things interesting..."
- lsniddy 11y ago
  http://collectionofawesome.com/2012/04/05/farside-comic-jerks/ http://collectionofawesome.com/2012/04/05/farside-comic-jerk...

malyk 11y ago

This is exactly what happens in my. Sigh irbid on the other side of Oakland (Golden Gate). There are a few white residents that post suspicious person posts/images on what seems like every person that walks down the street. I've turned off all crime alerts on nextdoor because of the absurdity of it.

monopolemagnet 11y ago
People whom get outside and actually examined "suspicious behavior" may be shocked to find normal, harmless people and that it was their own hobgoblins of their minds criminalizing people based on nothing more than their own fears, ignorance and prejudices, probably from watching too much TV and Hollywood movies rather than experiencing the real world.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Nextdoor should create a feedback system to incorporate this effect and help people calibrate. It could also bring in base-rate crime info to help make more accurate assessments of suspicious reports.

eimai134 11y ago

This is sad to read. People of every race--black, white, whatever--need to make an effort to get to know their neighbors. Simply saying hello to people when you're walking, introducing yourself, pointing out where you live, telling them about your pets, children, where you work or go to school, where you moved from, etc., can make a big difference in a community. I used to live in a very racially diverse apartment complex (more than 50% non-white). I was friendly with everyone and felt like the people I got to know were almost friends. Smiling, waving or saying hello to people forms a small bond that could help these overzealous people realize that if they reach out, they will see that they are over-reacting. By being friendly and getting to know people, we can learn that most people are not threats to us, and we can all be united in watching against the people who really are.

puredemo 11y ago
>we can all be united in watching against the people who really are. Almost like a neighborhood watch, one could say.

racl101 11y ago

What a drag this is. It's pathetic that humans always manage to misuse a tool for evil.

comrh 11y ago

I found out about nextdoor.com from reddit. I thought it was so bizarre people would want their full names, address and sometimes pictures broadcast. I wanted to see if I could get in with a fake address and name and they do require you to somehow verify you live there (they mail you a card or you link it to a phone number) so I just gave up. Lo and behold I get an email the next week saying my account had been approved anyone because "one of my neighbors verified I lived there".

dlandis 11y ago
If the address is linked to your credit card, then that counts as verification too. Unfortunately, even if you move and change your CC's address, I don't think they have a process to remove people (or re-verify them periodically).

dlandis 11y ago

I've met some nice neighbors via Nextdoor (and gotten help with some small things a couple times), but the discussions do tend to degenerate pretty rapidly (so much for posting under one's real identity having any significant impact on the quality of discussion...). But anyway, since I live in a high-crime area, by far the most common type of post is someone describing how they were just robbed (oftentimes at gunpoint), or they just saw a car get broken into, etc. It does make me kind of paranoid since I never would have known about any of those crimes had I not been on the site. I feel like my other neighbors who don't use it are comparatively clueless about just how much crime there is even within a few blocks of us. I guess that could be considered a good or a bad thing.

puredemo 11y ago
Isn't knowing better than not knowing? You can prepare accordingly.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Disruptive_Dave 11y ago

I've been on Nextdoor for well over two years and have seen literally zero of these types of communications. Maybe because I'm in a racially diverse area (North Brooklyn, NYC)? All threads and replies I've ever seen are: mass transit notifications, crime notifications, lost animals, free junk, stuff for sale, asking for recommendations for local merchants.

MichaelGG 11y ago

Sort of a weak article - no stats. It'd be much more useful if it simply stated things clearly. Something like "90% of reports are for Xs, while only 40% of the crimes are by Xs". Or even better, "out of n Xs, only m commit a crime". Then show incorrect biases there. (The only stat I saw was % of black population vs % of detainees being black - that's not so relevant without knowing actual crime rates. ) (Edit: I see why they didn't include this stat. According to [1], over 80% of suspects for various crimes were black. So that would explain why the police are pulling over a higher %, right? This still doesn't excuse base rate fallacy but sort of dismisses the one stat the article does provide.) Or more usefully, provide better characteristics off which to classify. If race, gender, and clothing have no predictive power, demonstrate that and show what does. Nextdoor could even build priors into the site, over time and help provide accurate predictions. After all, they have both the suspicious report info plus the actual crime info. Imagine if it would rate your post: "Based on your report of a male walking at 6am, the probability this is a criminal is 0.02%" That'd go a long way towards making people update internal models as well as making them look silly for using non-predictive characteristics. (Though if most crimes are committed by young males, it might be called out as ageist and sexist, but hey if that's reality...) Plus you could grade individual users. So combining the base rate of crime, significant characteristics, and past performance of a user? "MaryX, given your past suspicious activity record, there's a 99% chance this post is incorrect." Without this, all it takes is a busybody to report everything they see (and they can select on anything: race, gender, hair color, shoe size) and eventually get a correct hit. Then ignore the times they were wrong and point out how "see I reported this X and it was a thief!" 1: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Oakland-crime-issue-goes-far-deeper-than-racial-5355633.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Oakland-crime-...

arthur_pryor 11y ago
I like where you go with this in the second half, because I believe that racial profiling is pragmatically ineffective anyway. But I take issue with this statement: "If race, gender, and clothing have no predictive power, demonstrate that and show what does." I think the burden of proof is on the person using those tools both to show that they have predictive power, and to show that the action being taken on that prediction is reasonable. Put a different way: a couple of principles which I think most Americans probably believe in are: 1) innocent until proven guilty 2) no guilt by association (there are laws that allow restrictions on known felons associating with one another, but at least in that case, the association is based on convictions for actions the individuals have taken, not assumptions about a class to which they happen to belong due to who they were born to). I don't like the idea that someone can look suspicious, without acting suspiciously. I know there's inevitably a lot of overlap and gray area between those two things. But what I'm saying is that even if you have some statistical model which you believe has good predictive power based on inputs of race and dress, and your model says that scruffy looking black men are more likely to commit crimes, you still don't get to investigate someone just because that person's a scruffy looking black guy. (sidenote: I just noticed this reply sitting unposted in a tab I opened a few days ago, so this might not even get read, but it was already written, so whatever.)

ChuckMcM 11y ago

Sad, I wonder why the neighbors don't know each other better. We found that organizing block parties was a wonderful way to meet people who have moved in and share with them experiences and stories. Our neighborhood has gone from probably 95% white to now 30% Indian, 40% Chinese, and some Russian and probably the rest typical western european decended whites. Through out that as people move out and people move in we try to make people feel welcome and they really do appreciate it.

ParadigmBlender 11y ago

I did not have a positive experience with Nextdoor despite being pretty excited about the service at first. First strike was people posting spammy/pyramid scheme type sale stuff. My attempts to contact the local admins did not result in any change. More spam kept being posted. Strike 2/3, I did not want to reveal my full name when first signing up. One day I got an email informing me that my account was deleted (not just suspended) because I did not use a real name. There was no chance for me to remedy the situation. Too bad. Anyone know of an alternative?

olefoo 11y ago

It sounds like this would be a target for some social activist data mining. Scrape NextDoor, find the people who are posting weirdly racist screeds, and send a well dressed delegation to their doorstep to let them know that their name and identifying details will be posted on another site identifying them as racist bullies if they don't alter their behavior. Or, scrap the doorstepping and just send an email blast to their employers, business partners, and facebook contacts. If nothing else, they'll stop posting to NextDoor. Yep, it's rude, crude and thoroughly within the reach of any group of activists that want to get some notoriety. It's also one of those things that will drive home just how panoptic our society has become.

necessity 11y ago

Can you blame them? Most criminals are in fact black (which is not to say they are criminals because they are black, it's just a statistical fact). Moreover, it is all about looks. Dress like some gangster and you'll get bad looks from people. I bet no one gives the looks to a black man on a suit.

pavel_lishin 11y ago
> I bet no one gives the looks to a black man on a suit. You mean like a work uniform, like the kind a mail carrier would typically wear, that is mentioned specifically in the article?
- steveeq1 11y ago
  I think he said "suit", not that I necessarily agree with his opinion.
matthewmacleod 11y ago
If you feel the need to spout this racist nonsense, at least get your facts right. The vast majority of criminals in the US are white - https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-43 https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/...
- steveeq1 11y ago
  Are you sure this is accurate? Blacks account for over 50% of homicides despite being 14% of the population: http://i.imgur.com/tOTcCRH.jpg http://i.imgur.com/tOTcCRH.jpg I'm not saying "all blacks commit crime", but statistically it seems that black crime is disproportionate for their numbers.
  - matthewmacleod 11y ago
    Yes, I'm sure it's accurate, assuming we're talking about the US. Didn't you read the source I supplied? It's quite clearly stated there, and I'm fairly sure the FBI's numbers are accurate. The graph you linked to doesn't say what you claim it does – although it does point out the extent of intraracial crime in the black community. Despite that, you are correct that people identifying as "Black or African American" are about 52% of homicide arrests. That's an entirely different statistic. The fact remains: whatever ethnic bias exists within crime figures, the statement "Most criminals are in fact black" is categorically incorrect, and basically the epitome of crass, racist statements.

msie 11y ago

I've got a social problem - I'll fix it with technology! Now you've got two problems.