Product Decision #13: How NextDoor Tackled Racism On Their Platform

This is #13 in a collection of posts highlighting decisions made in tech to build and grow products.

Product Decision

Neighborhood social network Nextdoor ran into an issue recently where users began racially profiling people in their community in the ‘Crime and Safety’ section of the site. In order to rectify the issue, the team at Nextdoor experimented with different variations of changes that would force their user to answer a series of questions prior to reporting a “suspicious activity”. Based on results in their text markets, Nextdoor reduced posts containing racial profiling by 75%.

Details

More from Fusion:

Nextdoor found that a few changes to its interface actually did significantly discourage racial profiling by its users. On Thursday, Nextdoor rolled out these changes to all 110,000 neighborhoods on its platform. All users who make posts to their neighborhood’s “Crime and Safety” forum are now asked for additional information if their post mentions race. Nextdoor says that the new forms it’s introducing have “reduced posts containing racial profiling by 75% in our test markets.”

Here’s a screenshot for the updated form:

Read the full article here.

Have you encountered something similar at your company? If so, share your results in the comments.