Nextdoor's commitment to transparency | Nextdoor Blog

Updated on February 23, 2023:

Nextdoor publishes second-annual transparency report

Today, Nextdoor released its second annual Transparency Report, diving deeper into Nextdoor’s impact on neighborhood vitality. Key highlights include data across product, policy, and moderation initiatives, supporting Nextdoor’s purpose to cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on.

Building on last year, key findings from the 2022 Transparency Report include:

• Record low levels of harmful content: Content reported for being harmful was reduced to 0.2%, a 35% reduction from 2021, ensuring high levels of kind engagement are maintained, even as the number of neighbors has grown to over 75M around the globe.
• Strengthening community moderation: Nextdoor enhanced its unique community moderation model to support 210,900 volunteer community moderators in neighborhoods around the world who reviewed 92% of all reported content. Volunteer community moderators removed reported content at industry-setting speeds with a median time of 5.1 hours from time of report to removal.
• Increase in staff response rate: Nextdoor Operations staff accelerated their median speed to resolution across all categories of reported content by 31% vs 2021.
• Shift towards kinder conversations: Nextdoor’s first-of-its-kind Kindness Reminder delivered even better results year-over-year. Neighbors who received the reminder edited or withheld their post 36% of the time, up from 35% in 2021.
• New technology to support kindness: Nextdoor launched an award-winning Constructive Conversation Reminder, which uses machine learning to warn neighbors when a comment thread is becoming heated, and reminds them to be constructive before engaging.
• Increase in civil political discourse and access to voter information: Neighbors whose election-related content appeared likely to violate community guidelines received an election civility reminder that resulted in editing or withholding their posts nearly 30% of the time, leading to more civil political discourse. Additionally, U.S. midterm election resources served nearly 130 million impressions in support of Nextdoor’s partners and drove 3x engagement to Vote.org compared to the 2020 election.

Neighbors can read the full 2022 Transparency Report, HERE.

Updated on February 23, 2022:

Nextdoor publishes first annual 2021 transparency report

At Nextdoor, earning trust every day is paramount to how we operate. Our purpose is to cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on — and trust, transparency, and inclusivity are foundational to creating a welcoming platform that will help build vibrant communities.

Nextdoor is pleased to present its first Transparency Report, covering a breadth of data and insights from 2021. This report is a reflection of our company values which define how we bring our purpose to life. This report provides a comprehensive overview of Nextdoor’s community moderation model and our investment in neighborhood vitality. The results are encouraging:

• Nextdoor’s Welcoming Platform in action: Nextdoor prioritizes quality of engagement over quantity and has invested in adding moments of friction across the platform to slow people down and combat bias. Active in-product features such as requiring real names and the Good Neighbor Pledge help promote thoughtful conversations and create mutual accountability. 

Additionally, Nextdoor’s Kindness Reminder and Anti-Racism Notification utilize technology to detect language that may be harmful and make neighbors consider editing their post or comment before it goes live. In 2021, neighbors who encountered the Anti-Racism Notification edited or withheld their post or comment on average 34.4% of the time. Neighbors who encountered the Kindness Reminder edited or withheld their post or comment on average 34.6% of the time. 

• Our truly unique approach to content moderation: Nextdoor is committed to keeping interactions on the platform safe and productive and is responsive to content and members that violate our Community Guidelines. Our system is:
  • Comprehensive: A window into our three-tiered approach to moderation –  volunteer community moderators, trained staff, and technology to encourage the behaviors that support our purpose and uphold our Community Guidelines. 
  • Local, and at scale:  Unique to Nextdoor, is our 233,615 volunteer community moderators who are Nextdoor neighbors around the world with access to moderation tools to monitor community discussions, help keep dialogue on the platform civil, and ensure the guidelines are being followed in their Nextdoor neighborhoods. In 2021, our volunteer community moderators reviewed 86.9% of all reported content (1.8% of all pieces of content), and voted to remove 52.5% of reported content in a median time of 4.6 hours. 

The report also details how we respond to government requests. Government agencies can, by law, request neighbor information for civil, administrative, and law enforcement reasons from Nextdoor. The Transparency Report includes information about the raw number and type of requests we received from government agencies in 2021. Nextdoor’s users-first approach to working with government agencies ensures users that their data is protected. Prior to providing any information, each request is reviewed to make sure it satisfies applicable laws. From there, it is determined if content is available and can be provided.

This report was a collaborative process. We greatly value the support and endorsement we receive from our trusted partners, academic institutions, as well as policy makers globally.  

Derrick Johnson, President and CEO, NAACP said, “Nextdoor’s continued work to ensure the platform is a welcoming place for all, through implementing innovative product features, new policies, and community guidelines, is a responsibility they take seriously. We welcome the release of this Transparency Report as another demonstration of living their purpose and showing their commitment to building an online experience that is inclusive of every neighbor.”  

UK Digital Minister Chris Philp added, “It’s great to see Nextdoor taking proactive steps to improve transparency. This shows tech platforms embracing the spirit of our groundbreaking new online laws before they come into force. We welcome this move to improve accountability. Building a culture of openness is at the heart of our new bill which will give Ofcom the power to verify independently the accuracy of companies’ transparency reports.”

Marc Dunkelman, Fellow in International and Public Affairs, Brown University, noted ,“So frequently left out of the equation when we think about tech is the quality of the relationships formed online–in too many cases they’re shallow, temporary, and transactional. Nextdoor is proving that tech can be a gateway to healthier, more meaningful, longer-lasting real ties within a community.”

66 million verified neighbors in 11 countries around the world turn to Nextdoor to access information, give and get help, get things done, and build real-world connections with those nearby. At Nextdoor, we are constantly updating our product and policies to build a welcoming platform for all. 

We must earn trust every day and are committed to being transparent and we encourage neighbors to read the full Transparency Report, HERE.

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