Nextdoor censorship in SaddleBrooke
VIA SBINSIDER| December 6th, 2023
Nextdoor is a for-profit social website that proports to be a community resource. Its content guidelines allow for many types of postings and it is popular for persons looking for referrals on home remodeling, medical, pet caretaking and many other innocuous things. Their published community guidelines warn against posting “misinformation” on COVID, vaccines, elections, conspiracy theories, doxing, spam and hate speech. You get the idea.
But, who decides what is a bad post? Overall, it is the San Francisco based Nextdoor company but they appoint local, unpaid “moderators” who are empowered to reviewing posts that are flagged by site users. When a post is flagged for possible violation of the content policy, the post can be suppressed from view or deleted. Nobody except the company knows who these moderators are.
Like all other social media platforms, Nextdoor is selling you, the user and your data. They also have paid business accounts for promoting your business.
So, those are the alleged rules. SBINSIDER posts that were restaurant reviews received many views, in the thousands and promoted local eateries. Some user(s)? reported those posts as spam. Per the Nextdoor website spam is defined this way:
Spam is generally defined as unwanted, unsolicited, and/or repeated actions that negatively affect neighbors and the Nextdoor community. This may include but is not limited to
- Sending large amounts of direct messages to users who are not expecting them
- Contacting people with unwanted content or requests
- Repeatedly posting the same or similar content
- Posting unoriginal/templated content with no personalization or original commentary
A poster can have the abusive post allegation appealed. So whomever the local moderator is gets to decide. In our case, the penalty was a 3-day timeout for helping local restaurants get more customer. Mind you, not one of the restaurants reviewed on SBINSIDER are paid advertisers on this site.
SBINSIDER has local political content with a conservative view. In past, apparently those who disagree with that view, have posted false accusations such as SBINSIDER uses emails for other purposes than sending updates to subscribers.
As you can read on the time-out message, a positive review of a restaurant is now spam. Utterly ridiculous. Perhaps after this article appears, the “moderators” will moderate their insane policy decision. Those anonymous moderators are welcome to post a comment-we will not censor them.
I have found the SB Insider’s comments on most all their articles to be informative and positive in form. I cannot believe this depth of censorship is now infiltrating our own community in what I believed was a previously well-balanced and mostly open-minded demographic. Sad to be so wrong!
Can we substitute SBInsider for Nextdoor? If so, sign me up!
A review deemed spam? By what definition of Spam was it judged? Did it solicit business for the poster? No. Was it repeatedly posted? Not by the OP. Was it blatantly offensive, even in the mildest sense? No. Were there links to offensive content? No. SMH.
I had a comment censored by Nextdoor last spring regarding furniture replacement in one of our restaurants. We all know who the local moderator is and that’s ok, the issue is your opinion needs to line up with theirs. Plus just remember if you don’t know what the product is, it’s you! Plus for those who don’t know, the local Nextdoor is distributed far beyond the confines of Saddlebrooke. I never understood that back when I was getting mailbox stuffings asking me to join my neighbors on Nextdoor.