After getting tired of the Facebook, and now YouTube, censorship of anything remotely conservative, I decided to plot my social media exodus. If you read anything online, anyone contemplating leaving Facebook is an idiot, but since I don’t trust the media anyway, I wanted to try it myself. Over the next few Saturdays, I’m going to outline alternatives to Facebook, YouTube and Google, give each the pluses and minuses, and give you a guide on how to transition successfully.
But I won’t help you with Twitter. Twitter has always been hot garbage. You’re on your own there.
The first platform that you should try is Nextdoor. I found this gem on a list of alternative social media sites, and it does not disappoint. Nextdoor connects you with your neighbors. When you register, you put in your address, which then places you in a pre-defined neighborhood. You then get dropped right into a well-designed home page that shows you posts from your neighbors plus nearby neighborhoods.
The first big difference from Facebook is that there isn’t a friends list to maintain. Nextdoor lets you see only the people in your neighborhood. When you go to post something, you can only post in a number of categories: for sale, safety, general, lost and found and recommendations. When you look at the general feed, its not at all like Facebook. There aren’t annoying Vox articles linked by your liberal friends, or anti-vax memes from that crazy mom down the street. Nope, its just local news.
Which is not a bad thing. I found a city council meeting I had missed, so I got updates on nearby construction projects. I also found out our water metering people were hacked by ransomware, which is why they haven’t sent us a bill. I never saw any of that on Facebook, and those things actually affect me a lot more than most of the things I read on Facebook.
For your interest areas, there are local groups, although not nearly as many as Facebook. It didn’t take long to find a conservative group that was working to support local people running for office. I also quickly found a gardening group and pawpaw (the fruit) group. I had to start a group for dads, but there were a million mom groups already. Although it doesn’t have the number of groups of Facebook, the fact that I can make a group with people in the area only is kind of nice.
The other great feature is the “for sale” section. One of the big benefits of Facebook is the Marketplace section, where you can find a ton of items for sale, or sell your items quickly. I’ve made a killing selling firewood through Marketplace, and that was something I didn’t want to lose. Nextdoor has similar functionality. Even better, I’m not wasting my time looking at items that are hundreds of miles away but offer “free shipping.”
Overall, Nextdoor has about 75% of what I want in social media. I get local things that matter to me, local groups that I care about, and can sell to my neighbors. I miss out on out of area relatives and friends, which is why Nextdoor can’t replicate Facebook. To be fair, they don’t claim to do that, and if you live near most of your family, maybe you won’t mind.
I now find myself checking Nextdoor a lot more than Facebook, and certainly enjoying it more. Maybe you will too, I’d recommend giving it a try.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
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I signed up for Nextdoor earlier this year. I deleted my account less than 2 weeks later.
turns out, my neighbors are all a bunch of whiny Karens. Constant bickering little threads about anything and everything. It was *worse than Twitter*
alas that’s human nature
Same here. They banned all “non official” comments or links regarding the ccp flu. You cannot hide your location so the doxing or potential harassment is there
The karens were threatening, calling the cops on kids playing in the neighborhoods and all in all it was creepy.
Had a few good points, but were greatly outweighed by the bad
I tried Nextdoor a couple of years ago. Tried it again based on your post, and found it to be still utterly trivial. Sales items are exclusively junk/garbage. Groups are trivial. Discussion is sophomoric.
I signed up for Nextdoor based and a recommendation from a neighbor. I thought that it might have local news or maybe localized info about crime and such. After 6 months or so of it filling my email inbox with crap emails, I finally dropped it. Too much of people looking for recommendations for plumbers or baby sitters or you name it. Too many ads from teenagers looking for lawns to mow. Too much of “what was that noise last night at 10:30 pm?” Gaak, what a waste of time. Luckily, I didn’t see much politics or meddling busybodies, so there’s that.
The quality of Nextdoor will inevitably vary according to what people in your area think is important. Mine is very good.
My experience with Nextdoor is the same as the rest of the liberal big tech companies, they censor anything that does not comply with the liberal narrative.