Building Respectful Online Communities

Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar discusses some of the tools that Nextdoor is using to encourage positive behavior on their platform and discourage negative behavior. Their recent work, she says, has been influenced by academic psychology research, particularly Stanford psychology professor Jennifer Eberhardt’s work on bias. Friar explains how community guidelines, a prominent “neighbor pledge,” local moderators, and a new “community reviewer” role have helped encourage respectful digital interactions. A new “kindness reminder” pop-up, she adds, was designed to further cool the tone of online disagreements.