"nextdoor.com" - saviour of the neighbourhood, or

Digital Rights
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1

Innocently lurking in my letterbox recently was a plain white envelope addressed to:

<my suburb> Neighbour
<my address line 1>
<suburb> <state> <postcode>

The return address was

<my street> Neighbours
<my suburb>
<some PO Box in Chester Hill NSW>

Inside was a letter that was rather curious:

Hi <my street> Neighbour!

Our neighbourhood is now using a free private online
network called Nextdoor <my suburb> and you should join
us. On our website and mobile app, we share
recommendations for tradies, discuss safety and local
issues, plan neighbourhood events, post things for
sale, and much more.

It's 100% free and private - just for our neighbours.

Please go to au.nextdoor.com/join
and enter this code to join us: <six character upper case string>
(This code expires in  days!)

-<name of instigator>, <my street>

P.S. It's a great way to meet neighbours and get
recommendations for sitters, painters, cleaners and
more!


 things like “Our neighbourhood is now using” and “you should join” immediately make me ponder “says who?”. Of course if you don’t join, you will be given to thinking everyone on the street is talking about you - and why wouldn’t they?

“100% free and private” also makes my BS detector ring it’s $&$'s off - because the letter was specifically addressed to me, and a code is required to join. I’d bet that code is matched against my address. It also expires 
 why? sense of urgency and missing out I’d guess.

Then theres the instigator, who from various searches I’m led to believe will be some kind of administrator of my neighbourhood.

giphy

You don’t have to go far to find how this can play out 


Various and sundry 


and this one - apparently advice I can trust :rofl::joy: but anyway, she says in summary:

Fortunately, you have a few options when it comes to restricting Nextdoor’s access to your personal information. These include:

  1. Simply, don’t sign up in the first place.
  2. Manage your Personal Profile settings (click on the down arrow by your profile photo >> Your Profile).
  3. Delete your Nextdoor account from your computer (steps for iOS and Android vary slightly from these): Click on the down arrow by your profile picture >> Settings >> Account >> Deactivate Your Account >> tell Nextdoor why you’re leaving >> Deactivate.

I haven’t signed up 
 yet 
 trust = 0, so far 


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I received one of those a few months ago and after perusing it promptly added it to the recycling bin.

It is mind boggling how many ‘new, wondrous and targeted’ chat forums are out there competing for our information. It has become easy to hit ‘delete’ whether solicited by email or rmail. In this case Auspost must be happy :wink:

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3

The Australian business Nabo.com was sold, and handed over to the American nextdoor.com.

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4

I joined Nabo shortly before it was sold to nextdoor.com. I’m more of a" lurker" than an active participant on the site but did make use of it recently when a handyman posted a message offering his services. I have quite a few maintenance tasks requiring attention around the house and yard and had attempted to engage someone to replace perished split insulation on two 2nd-storey split-system air conditioners and clean a difficult-to-access studio gutter as a couple of small precursors tasks to gauge the professionalism of the person. No-one I’d reached out to was interested (they probably assessed this work to be too low value). I engaged the handyman who had posted on Nextdoor and he did a great job. So sites like Nextdoor seem to have value in connecting people who offer local services with purchasers of such services. It was certainly useful for me.

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5

We still use the local free weekly paper, on line or pickup on the way out of the IGA, bottle shop etc!

There are pages of large and small adds or listings of local businesses and tradies etc. Also community news and events. There is also space for community groups and individuals to put out support or share their views.

Still a great solution for people who prefer to live low tech. Yes, I have neighbours who have Foxtel with Telstra and a home phone but insist they do not have email or the internet!

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6

Some older family members received this from a neighbour they knew, so I tentatively activated an account for them at their request. Immediately I didn’t like the idea of their street being revealed to all in the group so I ensured I unticked that privacy option. Unfortunately, the posts on there were virtually all related to people in the area trying to sell a product or service. It wasn’t just tradespeople, it was people trying to help you lose weight or spammy things of that nature. What was most annoying was by default, an email was sent whenever something was posted. I think the account lasted less than a couple of days before they got annoyed and I promptly deactivated it (can’t recall if I was able to fully delete it).

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7

We received this “Neighbourhood” in our letterbox. It was obviously a mailout.
My wife signed up for it and is now happily singing in a local choir unknown to her before the connection.
I noticed that a condition of signing up is that you share all your contacts.
I don’t do that (knowingly) with any signup.
So, wife happy, but me: not.
BTW: in my wife’s list of contacts is her cousin in Mexico City and she received an invitation to be part of the Darlington neighbourhood.

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I’m with you. That sort of requirement for access is an automatic rejection for me too.

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9

Hi,
I am a Choice subscriber but also work for Nextdoor in Australia so I’m happy to clear up a few concerns.

I can assure you that there is no requirement to share your contacts with us. This is purely an option and you can skip this page when signing up.

Likewise, the postcards some of you have received are an opt-in way to grow your neighbourhood as we are primarily a neighbour-invite-neighbour model driven by word-of-mouth. Nextdoor is unlike other social networks as it starts with trust that everyone you are communicating with is from your very own neighbourhood - no exceptions. We want people to develop real-life relationships with those in their community, rather than spending hours talking online and consuming content.

Thousands of Australians are already using Nextdoor to stay in touch with local news, getting recommendations for trades and other small businesses. They are also reporting crime and safety issues, and helping each other share tools, babysitters and inviting each other for coffee.

If you select people to invite from your own email account, they may not be your immediate neighbours so might indeed get a postcard sent to them overseas! They can then join their own Nextdoor neighbourhood if they wish.

Cheers, Luke

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There is a newer topic about experiences with this web site at

so this one is being closed since it has been dormant for over 2 years.

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