I’m on NextDoor in Somerville, MA. I don’t contribute much to it, but I think it’s pretty good as a locally-base Facebook replacement.
People use real names, and real addresses (as far as I know). That probably limits the amount of negative or highly-polarizing discussion, though that could also be a symptom of the area.
Most of the discussion is about:
- Babysitters, nanny-shares, handymen, who can come shovel snow, etc.
- Freecycling
- Finding or creating meetup-style groups
- Neighborhood announcements (upcoming town halls, school open house, etc)
- Police bulletins
There’s not a lot of politics, although the election and the aftermath bring it up a little – e.g. an announcement is made that there will be a town hall about sanctuary cities, and so some people will use that as an opportunity to rail on immigrants, and get quickly shot down by everyone else. But you can mute threads/people you are not interested in.
I live in a very deep-blue liberal bubble, though, so I could see the discussion being quite different elsewhere. I seem to remember a post here on BB about the creators trying to do positive steps towards reducing that kind of behavior, though.
