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Comment by vermontdevil | Hacker News Reader

I live in a very affluent and safe area in Central Indiana. Yet my Next Door and FB neighborhood group has lot of posts from people living in fear of “rising crime” due to the constant stream of crime reporting from various sources.

I’m fine with being “aware” of what’s happening but there needs to be sensible curation of the info.

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Nextdoor is amazing for that! Every time a car backfires there are multiple posts about "Gunshots in the area!?"

Helicopter flying overhead? be sure to follow the multiple "Police choppers looking for a perp in our neighborhood!" posts.

People revel in fearmongering :(

And then wonder why the society is so trigger-happy?

The best summary of next door is "twitter for old people".

You lead a boring, event-free life and suddenly everything out of the ordinary becomes an alarming anomaly.

Los Angeles recently got the Citizen App. I was excited at first to be better informed. Then I realized... perhaps it's better I don't get a notification every time something happens within a 10 block radius. The world around me started to seem more dangerous, and that isn't helping anyone.

I hear that (I'm in Brooklyn), but there have also been cases where something happened nearby that would have changed my route (if I was about to go somewhere).

Or at work, there are alerts about things happening in Grand Central Station, which would also change my plans (if it happened when I was about to leave).

I guess it's never actually caused me to change plans, but I still think it's pretty valuable.

Actually, I did notify relatives when there was a dude with a gun walking around their neighborhood. It's really astounding how much craziness can happen right under your nose.

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