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NEXTDOORED

                                                   September 16, 2021
                                              Rev: November  18, 2021

The always problematic NextDoor-- which
has always been an excellent place to
lower your opinion of your neighbors--        Or, maybe it's doing something
had me wondering if it had adopted a          more complicated, like
dubious solution to it's problems, using      temporarily hiding potentialy
censorship of hot button topics to keep       controversial threads?
things more in the happy-happy zone.
                                                     Or maybe I can't figure
There was a pretty big shooting incident on our      out their latest "design".
street last night-- some heavy artillary was
sprayed down the street, clipping our house,         At the bottom of a post,
taking down the power lines, and hitting one         the "there are 38
guy sitting in a car in the back of the head--       comments!" is *not* a
he's critically injured, but weirdly might           link to the comments.
actually survive.                                    You need to scroll up
                                                     and click on the subject
This morning I checked around the various news       heading... and that link
outlets in the area and was unsurprised to find      is *not* the first line,
nothing at all-- local news coverage these days      but the second, and the
is remarkably weak, and by Oakland standards         underline on it is
this was only a medium-scale shooting incident.      hidden until you
                                                     mouse-over which seems
A quick look at NextDoor also showed nothing in      remarkably unclear on
particular, which I found surprising-- NextDoor,     the concept: it tells
back in the days when I all but gave up on it,       you you're in the right
was inhabited by a nervous-nellie ultra-nimby        place only after you
crowd that loved nothing better than to start        find it.
"was that gunfire!?" threads every time someone
blew off some fireworks.

I asked around and found that
there was some discussion there   And now, checking again several
last night, but for some reason   days later, I see the message I
it's visibility was erratic, I    expected to see... but I don't
didn't see the thread at first.   think I can find the thread I
                                  participated in afterwards.

                                                       But you know, never
This is the kind of conundrum that's facing            attribute to malice what
the net as a whole just now: you can use a             can easily be explained
quiet "moderation" strategy to keep the                by Javascript.
idiots from dominating a discussion, but
instead of talking it out in public they end
up feeling isolated-- and they could easily
end up feeling angry about having their
voices supressed.  They go off grumbling
about "free speech", looking around for
another outlet, a more underground discussion       Putting our social
group.  You personally may find that an             discourse in the hands
improvement, but the crazies are much less          of untrained,
likely to get someone pushing back, and             unregulated and (one
may get even crazier...                             suspects) underpaid
                                                    "moderators" is a
                                                    situation ripe for
                                                    generating paranoia...
                                                    though, in this case it
                                                    might be *my* paranoia.











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