It's no secret that NextDoor censors speech they don't like. Not by how it's said, but actually by what is said. Over the weekend, a large thread discussing the recent purchase of $22M of Legacy Lands by the City- exceeding expense projections by almost 500% and paying on average, a 700% premium over appraised value- has mysteriously disappeared.
Thanks to a good neighbor who was able to screenshot the entire conversation prior to its deletion, we can now attempt to figure out what is it about this particular post that caused it to be "unacceptable" while other posts that deal with local politics remain. I have sent this screenshot with the same question to NextDoor Support in California, but have not received a response.
Notice that a single "Neighbor" appears in almost every thread that is deleted or causes someone to be suspended for speaking their mind.
Imagine the frustration of being someone who spent an hour or more penning an opinion and/or response to the post, only to have your words wiped out and deleted forever by the complaint of a single gaslighter. Would you continue to post there? Would you just give up altogether when you realized the fix was in? Would you scratch your head and wonder if there was any depth they wouldn't stoop to in order to make sure your opinion was not heard or circulated?
Or would you fight back, by calling it exactly what it is?
Killing the messenger will NEVER silence the message.
They don't seem to like adults talking about difficult realities over there. Don't know how the "neighborhood app" expects to keep neighborhoods together if they can't assemble and talk about things impacting their community.
Hopefully other small towns aren't experiencing this problem as bad as we are. If they are, hopefully they all have their own Watch Camas style website to safely discuss the things that matter.
The count was up over 5,000 hours of neighbors suspended from their access to nextdoor last I checked the tracking page. watchcamas.com/urgent
A common denominator in threads that get folks banned off NextDoor appears to be that Swati Wilson disagrees extensively and repeatedly with the post/viewpoint/commenter. Why is that? Why would she be so personally invested in silencing those with whom she disagrees? What‘s in it for her? How does she stand to benefit? When someone works exceedingly hard to silence others rather than encouraging people to consider all viewpoints and decide for themselves there’s usually something to be gained.
Thank you to Watch Camas for providing a place for neighbors to share relevant information without censoring.
Thank you Margaret!
This site was built for the people of Camas and it will always be a safe place to have those conversations about this city. #WATCHCamas thrives when neighbors like you to continue the conversation and pass on the news tips - together, we are impacting this city for the better every day!
I have now been suspended from The Peoples Republic of NextDoor for making this post. No kidding. It appears I will soon be sent to the banished room for re-education.
I guess you'll have to go whole hogg, somewhere else! 🤣
Well I was banned AGAIN! I bet you can all guess who was in the thread!! I’ve never seen anything like this. I didn’t even say anything that violated community standards!
Debi-
I too have been banned twice in the past week or so. I too didn't engage in any personal attacks or say anything really controversial.
Apparently my "sin" was posting a link with an introduction , to my Watch Camas posting showing maps of the planned road system on the Northshore, all the way back to 2012.
Wear it as a badge of honor. Tell all your friends to come to WatchCamas. There's no censorship here!
Thanks for reporting what happened to you,
John
The latest $800K roundabout consultant contract passed during COVID shutdown included an interesting addition regarding NextDoor monitoring and social media platform management. It is called Sub-Task 13.5. PBS is the consultant.
It is no coincidence that not a single discussion about the many municipal issues exposed in Watch Camas articles is allowed to exist in NextDoor. And most of the posters and commenters that attempt to discuss those issues are summarily banned and deleted almost instantaneously.
It should alarm the citizens of Camas that they have “neighbors” who are going out of their way to attempt control what they read by silencing those who have differing opinions. We’ve seen it since last fall with the pool debacle and it’s amped up with the launch of WatchCamas. On NextDoor you have gutless “neighbors” who will gang up on you to mass report any posts that contains an opinion they don’t agree with to get your post removed and ideally, permanently ban you from NextDoor. Their goal is to 100% silence those with whom they disagree to make sure the rest of you A) can’t be exposed to all viewpoints and B) will be afraid to speak your mind freely.
Think about that! It’s 2020 in the USA and right here in small town Camas you live amongst people who believe your voice doesn’t matter because your opinions are different than theirs! They have zero respect for you as an autonomous person. They believe they should be the arbiters of what opinions and links you should be allowed to read in an attempt to control how and what you think. Imagine if these cowardly keyboard warriors had any real power over you.
For each single voice who posts on WatchCamas there are hundreds who visit and just read. They are smart, intelligent people who possess discernment. They don’t need or want their opinions assigned to them. They prefer to think for themselves.
To you cowards on NextDoor who brag about your little “DM group” that privately “laughs” at your neighbors: Thank you for boasting
about your behavior and showing everyone exactly who you are! While only a few may challenge you publicly, thousands see you clearly. Enjoy your little power trip for every post you get removed and every neighbor you work so hard to get banned on NextDoor, because you will never be able to do that on the WatchCamas website. This site is devoted to freethinkers and the traffic shows there are more of them than you.
Nice name-calling @kdenoya you're no better than those cowards and gutless people you're describing. You seem to most likely have some emotional issues. I agree conceptually about NextDoor, I think it's a pretty silly website too but calling people all these names invalidates you as a poor representative overall.
NextDoor is pretty much useless for me so I stay away from it but I do come here and have since its' inception hoping to find some good content and sometimes there is but when you @kdenoya continue to attack people on other sites or this site you bring down the interest level and seem to be a core member of this team/group/whatever you call it.
LOL I just took a break to read this entire post above and comments below. Yes, exactly why I don't get on ND and Swati haha yeah kind of a joke, she's all over that. Looks like she has nothing better to do than educate people on how misinformed they are.
I've never thought the purpose of this site was not valid, as I've only had issues around the implementation of it (and now people like @kdenoya calling names which appears to be his/her/them's main purpose of being on here) @kdenoya spends almost the same amount of time attacking and name-calling on here. Not quite as much but enough to show emotional instability for website activity IMHO.
@ph3n BTW, what's your name, Neighbor? Or do you like to remain nameless?
Here is a deleted thread in which Neighbors hijack a roundabout thread, demanding to know exactly who is behind the Watch Camas website. Of course, they never actually make a single rebuttal of anything written by Watch Camas, but instead attack the messenger or anyone who attempts to defend the message. This thread was immediately deleted too. Notice the names of the usual suspects involved. It is important to note that most every participant defending Watch Camas as simply another media outlet to consider- is now currently banned from NextDoor. It's no accident.
It's a fundamental flaw with nextdoor. It's not a place to speak to your neighbors, it's an advertising platform and a way to sell hyper local data to complete consumer profiles. Remember that in most cases, if you don't pay for a service, then YOU are the product being sold. The nextdoor terms of service ("community guidelines") literally say it's a violation to disagree in public.
So if you say your favorite milkshake at K&M Drive-thru is Strawberry, and I say, "I like strawberry, but chocolate is their best milkshake by far" I can be (and have been) banned if someone knows the right buttons to push.
Serves me right I guess.
Went back to look at their guidelines again and it looks like they've recently updated with some nuance?
This might explain why the last time I was banned I was placed in an "read-only" mode and not outright suspended from the site. I still haven't heard from anyone that has experienced this type of ban.
Little old Camas might actually be having an impact on nextdoor's policy. Do you think we've been the topic of a meeting all the way over there in California? Or is this just happening all over the country to hundreds or thousands of small towns like ours and it's catching up with them?
Still no answers. To the simple questions that started ALL of this.
Why was the Legacy Lands program promised to us in 2018 for a net tax bill of $1.5M, but then delivered to us this Spring for $22M?
Why did all of the different parcels of land suddenly see 700% increases in appraised value AFTER we had begun negotiating for them?
And why did we borrow bond money and sign promissory notes to pay for them DURING pandemic shutdown?
The questions cannot be more clear. Can ANYONE respond in any logical way?
#crickets