For Nextdoor, Eliminating Racism Is No Quick Fix

Jessi Hempel, writing at Backchannel:

Tolia was dining with his communications director, Kelsey Grady, when her iPhone alerted them to the story’s publication. They read the lengthy feature together. It alleged that white Oakland residents were using the “crime and safety” category of Nextdoor to report suspicious activity about their black neighbors. “Rather than bridging gaps between neighbors, Nextdoor can become a forum for paranoid racialism — the equivalent of the nosy Neighborhood Watch appointee in a gated community,” wrote Pendarvis Harshaw.