zlacker

>>pseudo+(OP)
I live in an immediate suburb of Boston, and joined Nextdoor and joined to see what features were attracting so many folks to a new social media platform. Wow! Anyone with a tattoo, going to your door for any reason was considered "suspicious" and reported. One alarming thing, is that NextDoor is feeding on our fears about outsiders who look different, and creating a loop out of this for higher engagement when people post pictures and engage their camera feed.

It's too bad, I think idea of organizing a social network based on proximity and centered around community information is a viable idea, It's just that NextDoor is doing that with our worst instincts.

>>wespis+8g
> I think idea of organizing a social network based on proximity and centered around community information is a viable idea

NextDoor and Craigslist and Reddit's /r/{city} communities just prove that it may be viable but it's pretty undesirable. I think it's best to not give the most neurotic, ill people of your community the loudest voice, but these social networks also create this neuroticism and illness.

You also create a scenario (NextDoor especially) where all the sane people are driven out by the crazies. Back when NextDoor was new, after a year it would come up in conversation and sure enough, anyone normal would admit they tried it and had to delete it.

Social media is messing us up. I don't think we're missing some new take on it that's going to make it all better. I think the vestigially tribal parts of our brain make it a non-starter. We need to get back to the face-to-face -- it seems to be the only way we keep in mind that there's a human at the other end of the line, not some nebulous automaton that we craft into everything we hate in the world.

>>hombre+Zp
I’ve found the r/city subs i’ve been in has been great. Perhaps depends where you live...

>>nxpnsv+GV
It seems like since the last presidential election, /r/nyc has been getting brigaded by conservatives who don't live in the area.

Lately some these guys have a post history in /r/Seattle too, talking about CHAZ or whatever.

It's obnoxious, there's enough going on locally in NYC without a bunch of racists jumping in to defend stop and frisk or whatever.

>>CoolGu+v11
I subscribe to both those subs, and the signal:noise ratio is very bad. It's pretty obvious that there's a substantial amount of posts from people who have neither lived in nor traveled to these cities. I was visiting both subs regularly until I realized that they just made me anxious and depressed. Posts are frequently just signal boosts of lurid local news about rape/arson/homelessness/etc.

It's not something you see in subreddits for smaller or less popular cities with similar demographics. Subreddits for these tend to be actually useful.