Agreed, local TV news has been heavy on fear with a sprinkling of cutesy feelgood for decades. It deserves to die.

I do find it mildly ironic that TFA is also fear-based. Will they never learn?

That's funny because "fear" sounds like the German word "vier" which stands for four and would make it sound like Channel Four again.

What's 'next door'?

A place for Concerned Citizens to alert the neighborhood about petty HOA violations and kids playing outdoors. Although I hear they're about to introduce a feature in which the local police department will be able to deliver their PR releases directly to your news feed. Also a good place to report stray cats as lost pets.

It's local, it's unfiltered, but… I wonder about the long term effect it will have on my estimation of my neighbors. Checking any more than once or twice a month is probably not doing anyone any favors.

The ability of local agencies to just post to your feed has been a feature of Nextdoor for years. They can also close their posts to discussion, which is pretty irritating.

Looks like the feature was just rolled out. It was to reset my opt-out settings for nextdoor emails so that I can now receive "Emergency Alerts" with the first such instance being a road 45 minutes away being closed because it rained.

It might go without saying that I'm slightly even less impressed with Next Door than when I wrote the original comment, but it does make me think: is this product bad because of the people it attracts? Is that its fault, i.e. could it be targeted better or formatted better (think Stack Overflow vs web forums)? How could the problem be solved in a less obnoxious way?

Nextdoor is bad because your neighbors are bad people, and it only takes a few to wreck it. Somewhere on your block lives a life-long racist, a chemtrail crackpot, and an insufferable busybody. Normally these people hide but for some reason they think Nextdoor is their safe space.

My county has an independent Facebook page called nosy neighbor. They alert ask questions and can be asked wtf us going on. They also give news rundowns responsibly. It actually is a pretty ideal setup. No sensation but gets the word out and asks and filters info properly

Locality based mailing list / social network critter.