Thursday, September 17, 2015

"Echo Chamber of Delusion, Paranoia and Racism”

GREENSBORO, NC -- The Greensboro Police Department announced today a partnership, short on specifics, with Nextdoor.com, the closed social site/app that requires users to sign up with their real names and provide their verified address.

Out of the currently 123 reviews of Nextdoor.com on Site Jabber, 99 give it one star out of five. Here are some of the most notable, good and bad:
Every person "who looks out of place" walking on the sidewalk gets called out on the app. God help you if you're black and knocking on doors in our neighborhood.
----
I signed up for this service because it was recommended by the city that we live in for traffic alerts, street closings, etc. I signed up for the service, began to browse for vital information in my city, and only then found out that this website publishes your entire personal information for everyone in the community to see without divulging this to users before the sign up. Considering we pay for a non-published phone number and address, I was pretty upset to find all of my private information listed. I deactivated my account, and only then did I look for complaints about the company. Boy was I surprised to see the complaints on here.
---
The best thing is I feel cool after expressing my opinion there, about environment and things. That's why I don't read free local paper any more.
---
The app sends "push notifications" for urgent alerts tagged as "Crime & Safety". This means that every bored, stupid Desperate Housewife who gins up a fantasy of danger now has the ability to push her stupid blather straight to your cell phone.
---
I highly recommend this medium, it is a great resource to share emergency news (ie.: missing pets, bears in the neighborhood, theft alerts, odd jobs, yard sales, free stuff, block parties, etc.). A neighborhood is safer when its residents care and keep an active neighborhood watch.
---
home to politically correct extremists...
---
Continue to be re-registered by either the company or site lead. Have unsubscribed and quit the stupid site three different times only find NEW bat-$#*! crazy posts from "neighbors" I don't know. Ironically, it keeps signing me up for neighborhood I don't even live in. There must be some sort of con / grift going on whereby the company is trying to pump up its user numbers.
---

If you like trying to communicate with brain dead idiots this is the website for you.
---
This organization sounds like it is run like a Junior High popularity club.
---
Nothing has caused more hard feelings between neighbors in my community than Nextdoor.
---
This works beautifully. Obviously it depends on the type of neighbors you have, but I have found NextDoor to be a life saver many times.
---
I've found this site to be used only to judge and provide nasty comments about neighbors, and not helpful at all. 
---
I also love it because the Police Department can post urgent messages to those neighborhoods under their jurisdiction.
---
Complete scam. How do I know ? Postal mail has return addresses of non-existent people in our own neighborhood saying we are "invited" to join. Getting them weekly now with fake return addresses claiming to be from neighbors. So folks, nothing free is any good. They are up to something. Pretty sure it will end badly for the investors....
---
I feel that in this day and age if you need an app to communicate with your neighbors, instead of going and rining their doorbell, then maybe you should just stay inside.
---
What it is is simply a means to locally share information and get to know your neighbors. As with all things that involve people, things can go wrong quickly if people aren't respecting each other and treating each other with kindness and understanding.
  ---
if you are a upscale tight ass this site is for you.



Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Council candidate cuts through the bull

Marc Ridgill is a retired police officer running for city council. He is also a prolific blogger, utilizing the medium in ways (like local state legislator John Hardister) that one wishes incumbent council people would, explaining the issues as he sees them and offering his ideas — and he does it on a platform that doesn't require one to log in in order to be subjected to data gathering and privacy invasions. Elected officials (hello city council) and challengers (I'm talking to you Michael Picarlelli) who are okay with confining their online constituent outreach to Facebook demonstrate either unconcern for legitimate privacy issues or a general laziness; neither flattering. But I digress.

While polite commentators and genteel reporters danced around the reasons for state senator Trudy Wade's recent attempt to redistrict Greensboro's city council as mysterious and unfathomable, Ridgill cuts through the bull and comes out and says it.
Our current system lends itself to areas of our city that are more active politically than others.  Part of this problem is the apathy in many parts of Greensboro that feel their vote won't accomplish anything, citing preferential treatment to downtown development and east side Greensboro political leaders.  East Greensboro has long been more organized as a voting block in our city elections and under this system has direct effect on 6 of the 9 council seats; Districts 1 and 2, all 3 At Large seats and the Mayor.  It is for this reason that many in town want to eliminate the At Large seats for more streamlined representation of the city by reducing the size of the districts and eliminating the manipulation of the council by political activists.
Ridgill's survey of the landscape might be a bit oversimplified, as it leaves no room to explain the not so long ago upset of incumbent mayor Yvonne Johnson by Bill Knight in an election that gave city council four conservative members, but premises don't have to be correct to become motivations.

While rejiggering the system to diminish the effects of motivated constituencies and enhancing the influence of the complacent seems counter to the American spirit—or maybe the argument is that, in a different setting the currently apathetic will become motivated—either way, one cannot deny that the motive behind Trudy Wade's plan is to diminish the political influence, real or perceived, of Greensboro's minorities on city council elections, and it's about time someone said it so plainly.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...