Why I Am No Longer Posting on NextDoor.com
A True Story
Some of you may wonder why I am no longer posting on NextDoor.com. I used to post quite a bit and some of my posts got a great deal of engagement. And then one day without warning, I was suspended. Let me explain.
My History On Nextdoor
I’ve been a member of Nextdoor for many years. I never had a single post removed. I never use obscenities. I am never abusive. I always followed the rules. I still have an account, but I no longer use it to post.
I had some very successful posts. Many of my posts had two thousand views. Until recently, my most successful post had six thousand views in the first 48 hours.
I was never rude or abusive, but I never shied away from stating facts and telling the truth. I had some interesting discussions with YIMBYs and proponents of the Great Highway closure. I said that it should be named “Great Asphalt Park”. I made my case that Proposition K in November 2024 which closed the Great Highway was filled with numerous exaggerations and misleading statements. I told the YIMBYs that their upzoning plan will be a disaster for renters and for the city and presented facts to show it was true. I argued that the wealthy developers will profit at the expense of renters and other residents.
My “Offense”
One day I posted a short message about the new building proposed for 230 Anza Street:
This was just approved for the inner Richmond. It will be coming soon to your own block.
This is not a joke. This is not an exaggeration.
Goodbye San Francisco. You had a great run but it’s over.
I posted this on a Friday morning. I was very surprised on Friday afternoon when I saw that it had over 8,000 views in six hours! My most successful post before that had 6,000 views in 48 hours.
When I signed in on Saturday morning, I was shocked to see this message on my phone:
Huh???
The messages I had posted had obviously not violated any rules. They certainly didn’t qualify as “spam”. One of them was a week old and somehow it now violated Nextdoor’s terms a week later?
So, three very innocuous messages posted a week apart were suddenly deemed to violate Nextdoor’s terms all at the same time.
I appealed my suspension and in a short time the appeal was denied.
I did a bit of googling and found that my situation was not unusual. There were others who had been banned from Nextdoor for political purposes.
Gaming the Nextdoor Moderation System
Here’s the dirty little secret of Nextdoor. The moderators are volunteers and their system is based on the honor system. Because of that their system can be easily gamed by dishonorable people. If three messages are deemed to have violated the rules in a short period of time, the account is suspended. Nextdoor does not have enough employees to oversee the system, so suspensions are almost always automatically upheld. It is against the rules to discuss Nextdoor’s moderation policies on Nextdoor!
Anyone who has been on Nextdoor long enough and who has been active enough is offered the chance to become a moderator.
Gaming the system is easy. It just requires four accounts acting in cahoots. It’s easy for one person to create multiple accounts, so one person with multiple accounts could do it. One account reports the “violation”. Three more right away vote to remove the message. If they do this to three messages by the same person, that person’s account is suspended.
I very strongly suspect this is what happened to me. I had clearly pissed off some people by posting facts they didn’t like.
Conclusion
That’s the story of why I no longer post on Nextdoor. I do read the site from time to time, but if I post any messages, they could use those to suspend my account again by reporting them and then using three bogus moderator accounts to remove them.
If you’re concerned about this, please join the Facebook group I created to discuss San Francisco issues free of this kind of nonsense: San Francisco Neighborhoods United (opens in a new tab).