As protests swept the nation following the police killing of George Floyd, there was a surge of reports that Nextdoor, the hyperlocal social media app,…
As protests swept the nation following the police killing of George Floyd, there was a surge of reports that Nextdoor, the hyperlocal social media app, was censoring posts about Black Lives Matter and racial injustice.
In an interview with NPR, Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar said the company should have moved more quickly to protect posts related to Black Lives Matter by providing clearer guidance.
It „was really our fault“ that moderators on forums across the country were deleting those posts, she said.
People of color have long accused Nextdoor, which serves as a community bulletin board in more than 265,000 neighborhoods across the U. S., of doing nothing about users‘ racist comments and complaints. But Nextdoor came under especially heavy criticism in May, after the company voiced public support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Unpaid volunteers, known as Leads, moderate posts on Nextdoor. Friar said they were deleting posts about Black Lives Matter because they were following outdated rules stating that national conversations have no place in neighborhood forums. Those guidelines have now been revised to state that conversations about racial inequality and Black Lives Matter are allowed on Nextdoor.
„We did not move quickly enough to tell our Leads that topics like Black Lives Matter were local in terms of their relevance,“ Friar said. „A lot of our Leads viewed Black Lives Matter as a national issue that was happening. And so, they removed that content, thinking it was consistent with our guidelines,“ she said.
She added that the new rules make one thing clear: „Black Lives Matter is a local topic.“
Friar said that Nextdoor is taking several more steps to improve the moderation of comments. It will soon offer unconscious bias training to all moderators. It will launch a campaign to enlist more Black moderators. And it is ramping up efforts to detect and remove instances of racial profiling.
Apologizing, then asking help from Black users of Nextdoor
Neighbors take to Nextdoor to search for a local plumber, find a babysitter or sell a piece of furniture.
