My husband downloaded the app and quickly deleted it. 
He is now using the Ring app to get a fix of neighborhood coyote and bobcat sightings and occasional porch pirate appearances in the ‘hood.
Aside from this forum and similar, I don’t use social media. The negatives outweigh the positives for me. I looked through my area NextDoor just now. It didn’t seem toxic, but >95% of threads had zero interest for me. I also didn’t see people I know posting, so no sense of community. There was far too much advertising services. This seems like the majority of threads. There were also a surprising number of threads about kids on ebikes, many with pictures. I did like camera wildlife videos, including ones showing coyotes and bobcats. Unfortunately these were quite rare.
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My NextDoor is similar- coyote sightings, political everything, etc. During COVID lockdown someone posted pics of kids playing basketball at a park ( parks were closed here)- that was extremely toxic, I was done.
Prior to that I did get a great contractor recommendation. Now I just ask my friends when I need a recc.
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I’m still on our Nextdoor page because people do post community events and some safety notifications (everything from coyotes to package thefts). But, the overwhelming majority of comments are super polarizing and nasty. I read next to nothing anymore.
I have an account, but I only use it to find recommendations for workers. I just found the best electrician who owns his own business and is wonderful. I ignore all the political comments, coyote warnings, lost cats, and scammers. I always follow up with a reddit search to make sure the recommendations are backed up by actual customers. If it weren’t for this aspect of Nextdoor, I would most definitely delete the app.
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I never open the app…I get a “digest” of posts in my email…every now and then I take a peek, but it doesn’t seem very worthwhile. It would be better if it were truly “neighborhood” but what I see is my whole small city/metro area’s posts. Warnings about a package thief sighted 20-30 minutes away on the far side of town are not much good to me.
I’m also in a local facebook group, which until recently was about 75% good/25% bad. Great info about local events, new restaurants, funny posts about weird things people saw around town, lost pets (which I don’t mind)…and then a few rants/complaints about whatever. No scammers asking for money allowed. Then this month it as turned into 75% arguments about Ice and race/immigration related discussion, and 25% everything else. I am trying to just ignore it for now and assume it will become more reasonable again at some point…
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If I open it, all I see are political posts, ads, missing pets, and coyotes. The last two are probably related.
It used to show just a few neighborhoods around me, but now I get areas not even close so I never do more than a cursory look from time to time.
There is a FB group for my city, but I don’t belong to it. If there’s anything there, my sister will let me know.
I am in FB groups for the neighborhood and two towns close to where our second home is. In the neighborhood it’s mostly power outages, unknown vehicles, or people wandering through. The towns have some interesting things, weather, and the usual elk, wild critters, and wandering pets, and a lot of claptrap. It’s readily apparent to me why I wouldn’t want to live there full-time.
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The first thing I do when opening the Next Door app (or clicking on a post on the daily email) is filter to Nearby. That at least limits the posts to those close by as opposed to the whole city.
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Our NextDoor is a mixed bag, but there is some good local info and contractor recommendations. This week though I hit the jackpot… ended up connecting with a very active 88 year old who rents out a bedroom and a small apartment at her house, and she will share info/warning and contracts with a neighbor who needs a roommate to help with the bills.
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