Nextdoor scraps Forward To Police feature, doing the bare minimum

Amid renewed criticisms that the app facilitates racial profiling and other harmful policing issues, Nextdoor has done the bare minimum. The neighborhood-oriented social media app announced late on Thursday, June 18, that it would be pulling its controversial Forward to Police feature.

While the announcement claims this is part of the company's new anti-racism efforts, it also makes clear that "only a small percentage of law enforcement agencies chose to use the tool" anyway. Also, a Bloomberg report points out the app still allows users to directly contact law enforcement through other means, like direct messaging them.

Bloomberg also reported obtaining an email from Nextdoor to a Minneapolis Police Department spokesperson from June 12, giving a "heads up" about the feature being pulled and further stating that the company would notify its other law enforcement partners ahead of the public announcement. The email did not mention race once, either, mostly citing lack of engagement with the feature as reason for its removal and pointing to direct messaging as a more effective communication method for users and law enforcement.

Notably, Minneapolis Police Department officers are the ones currently facing charges for the murder of George Floyd, which initially sparked the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests.

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It's hard to see how scuttling this little-used feature — all while conferring with the police about it — addresses any of the concerns that Nextdoor's platform is a hotbed for racist behavior.

Like many companies, Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar issued a statement on June 11 in response to the nationwide protests. While condemning systemic racism in America and making vague promises to address racism on the platform, the statement did not include a single mention of the police or the platform's role in potentially exacerbating the issue of racial profiling and police brutality.

The statement also came weeks after the company received backlash over a Twitter post claiming solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement — even while moderators were removing posts that claimed phrases like "#BlackLivesMatter" violated Nextdoor's Community Guidelines.

Pulling the Forward to Police feature is a low-hanging fruit kind of move, giving Nextdoor the appearance of commitment to pushing back against racism on the app. But it's a little hypocritical to claim any effort can be "anti-racist" when one notifies law enforcement partners about it ahead of time while never mentioning race as the central issue.