Is your local Nextdoor less racist lately? The company is trying to raise the bar on users identifying "suspicious" behavior.
Now when users of the local social networking program make a crime or safety post that identifies a person by race, users must also include information about clothing or hairstyle. There's also a feature that allows other users to flag behavior that seems to profile based on race.
According to Nextdoor, that's reduced racial profiling by 75 percent in their test markets.
If true, that's important. Last year, the East Bay Express wrote a great story about how racial profiling on the site in Oakland made people of color feel alien in their own neighborhoods.
I'm noting this mainly because I really would like to hear if it's had an impact in the tenor of conversations on the site around Denver.
The change is only a day old as of Friday, but keep an eye out for me. I haven't seen many overtly racial posts in my Capitol Hill and surrounding neighborhoods feed, but that doesn't mean that there hasn't been a problem.
Email me at [email protected] if you have a story about racial profiling on Nextdoor in Denver.
