Nextdoor.com Executives Meet With Oakland Activists, Discuss Efforts to Combat Racial Profiling

[KamaAina]

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2015/10/28/nextdoorcom-executives-meet-with-oakland-activists-discuss-efforts-to-combat-racial-profiling

Nirav Tolia, co-founder and CEO of the neighborhood social networking site Nextdoor.com, met with a group of Oakland activists today to discuss concerns about racial profiling on the website. As I investigated in a recent cover story, "Racial Profiling Via Nextdoor.com," Nextdoor has evolved into a virtual neighborhood watch in Oakland with members frequently using the Crime and Safety section of the site to post unsubstantiated "suspicious activity" warnings about Black residents who aren't doing anything wrong. Throughout the city, Nextdoor posts have labeled Black people as suspects simply for walking down the street or driving a car. In an effort to combat these kinds of offensive posts, a group of activists called Neighbors for Racial Justice — made up of white residents and people of color (some who have been profiled in their own neighborhoods) — is now pushing the San Francisco-based tech company to make concrete changes to the site.

Earlier this month, Tolia responded to the Express article with a blogpost on Nextdoor.com outlining the company's plans to curb racial profiling — including potential new training initiatives and changes to the site's guidelines. Today at the co-working space Impact Hub Oakland, Tolia and three other Nextdoor representatives met with five members of Neighbors for Racial Justice, which invited me to sit in on the meeting. The activists — including Upper Dimond resident Shikira Porter, who I featured prominently in my piece — presented Nextdoor with a number of proposals aimed at eliminating racial profiling on the site. In addition to Tolia, the meeting included Kelsey Grady, Nextdoor's head of communications; Gordon Strause, director of neighborhood operations; and Maryam Mohit, director of product.

Tolia told the group that Nextdoor plans to add a "racial profiling button" to the site, which means users will be able to flag posts for racial profiling. Currently, users can flag comments that they believe are inappropriate or abusive, but there's no way to specify racial profiling. "We want to create that very specific signal for us," Tolia said. In the current system, when users flag a post for any reason, neighborhood "leads" — who are volunteer citizen moderators — can review the post and decide whether it violates Nextdoor's guidelines, which prohibit discriminatory posts and profiling. The problem, according to Neighbors for Racial Justice, is that the leads sometimes do not take those concerns sincerely, and, on the contrary, have even gone so far as to censor posts calling out racial profiling in some Oakland neighborhoods. Users can reach out to the company directly if they are not satisfied with the lead's response, but some have said that this process is difficult....

Today, Neighbors for Racial Justice proposed a number of more substantive initiatives — changes that Tolia and the others agreed to consider. The group suggested that Nextdoor adopt clear restrictions on how people post about crime, including prohibiting the use of racially offensive "code words," such as the "AA" label — which, I have seen, people frequently use to describe "suspicious" African-American people on Nextdoor's Oakland pages. More broadly, the group requested that Nextdoor consider banning posts that describe "suspicions," since those are subject to people's implicit racial biases, and instead direct users to only post crime and safety warnings when they witness actual illegal behavior.