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Comment by RyJones | Hacker News Reader

I was in Made, Netherlands, this summer and saw they had per-neighborhood/per-street signs for WhatsApp groups that the police monitored. I thought that was a little rich for such an isolated berg - the biggest crimes there probably deserve harsh looks and muttering.

Next day, walking around Leverkusen, I saw the same thing. I asked around but my ability to ferret out who paid for these signs was exceeded by my desire to be anonymous.

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They had a group for this when I was living in Hoofddorp. From memory they called it "Buurtpreventie" which I suppose translates into "Neighbourhood Watch" really. It's just a new evolution of what has existed for ages. It allows faster communication rather than Jan calling Sanne who calls Peter to inform that someone isn't taking their bins out on the correct day.

Technically it means "prevention of neighbourhood" which is obviously kind of silly.

I first thought you meant that the police monitored the groups nonconsensually in order to track the residents' activities, but then I realized you probably meant that the police are actively invited to participate in the groups in order to receive reports from the residents—is that right?

That's how it works. The local beat officer is usually invited in. I'm glad no one in my neighbourhood came up with this idea yet. It really irks me that a commercial entity dominates our public spaces to the level of bleeding street signs.

If you live in one of those neighbourhoods you either participate (meaning you are required to purchase an Android or IOS smartphone, and required to register an account with Facebook's WhatsApp) or get left out of the loop completely. So much for freedom to choose.

From what I've heard from people that do live in such neighbourhoods is that these group chats are a constant distraction of irrelevancies spammed by a handful of very active users. Successfully moderated groups of this type seem rare.

I don't think police is usually in these groups; it's just intended as a warning sign for potential, say, burglars, that the people in the neighbourhood are watching out for each other.

In practice, these groups are sometimes used by the racist neighbour to "warn" their neighbours of dark-skinned people walking around. And it's useful for organising neighbourhood events.

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