Forget about nextdoor and leads. Get a life, a real one. Don't waste your time with toxic online communities that tend to get the worst out of people.
My advise is run away while you still have some dignity left.

It's tough fighting a lead on a power trip. And Nextdoor corporate doesn't seem to be interested about customer satisfaction. At the time I was on Nextdoor, many participants recommended different topic categories such as politics... never happened. Either the lead didn't know how to create another category or simply didn't care and preferred to be the "executioner." I think it was the latter.

Hi Nancy,
I'll try to explain how, as a Lead how I am monitored or controlled. All Leads are controlled by Nextdoor Support and any complaint about a Lead must be sent to them (Use the Help function, go to the bottom of the screen and select email help for the quickest response)

With that said, in most Nextdoor Neighborhoods, a single person or small group started the neighborhood and built the membership. There was never an "election or selection process" for appointing new Leads. The first lead selects the next and all Leads are required to maintain the Nextdoor Terms and Conditions. Only in some very limited situations does ND Support ever appoint Leads.

Leads may only be removed by Nextdoor Support, upon a violation of policies or like abandonment.

So, Your Leads will tend to control the Neighborhood as they feel is best.

Not all ND Members agree on "what is best", and it often leads to difficulties, but if the Lead is following ND Policies and Procedures, the best approach is to make sure that YOU understand the intent of Nextdoor Yourself and if You believe the Lead is not correctly enforcing the ND policies, then notify Support as noted above.

However, if the policies are being maintained properly but YOU want more latitude in what You want to say, Try the Public or Private Groups function.

Create Your Own Group, (public or private) and invite other Members to join You. Talk about what You want, even what Your Lead is doing or not doing, to see if others agree with Your point of view. If You have half of Your Members, in the group saying the Lead is not doing the job as You might like, then contact support and indicate the issues to see if they can assist.

Make sure to give Support exact items that were removed, not guesses or just claims.

Keep copies of posts You make. I do it like this sometimes. I make a post then do a copy and paste to an email and send it to myself. If my LEGAL post is removed by the Lead, simply copy that post to Nextdoor Support.

Nextdoor Support seems to ignore open complaints like (My Lead is removing my posts) without a real example.

Every Neighborhood can also set local guidelines as well and may enforce them, as long as they remain within the Nextdoor Policies.
In Our Neighborhood, we opened a public group called "All Discussion", where any Member can post topics that do not appear in the Main News Feed and are not monitored as closely for improper or illegal topics.

We do not allow any form of Commercial, Religious, Political type posts on the Main News Feed (that is Your "all neighbors" - General). However if Members was to discuss those topics in one of the Groups, that is fine.

Our Main News Feed is reserved for the categories (except General) and notifications only. We do not allow "Open Discussion" in the "All Neighbors" General or other Categories.

If I did not hit Your exact concerns, please reply with more specifics and I will try to help more.

Good Luck
Randy

I got hold of Corporate Nextdoor about the Lead that never knew he was lead until I went to his home to tell him as he started it in this neighborhood. He was slandering me, however Tyler in Corporate turned it around on me--so I give you no hope on this one.
Jim M.

The leads have a ridiculous amount of power to censor that in the wrong person is a nightmare. Our lead was a former politician who used it to censor speech and punish his enemies. Only after much abuse was he asked to curtail his censorship BUT STILL IS RETAINED as the LEAD. It is an absurd proposition. I agree with moderation for civility but censoring for political views is ridiculous. The kind of speech that was censored was local issues and therefore a relevant topic for a local board. The management at NextDoor doesn't care about the communities they serve. It is just a get rich quick scheme. They will sell to Facebook soon.

The site is ridiculous, and a few of the leads go on a power trip, seeking approval from their friends, and censoring anyone they may harbor ill feelings against. For example, I made the mistake of opposing a specific individual's position on a topic who felt very strongly about their stance. In turn, the individual began calling me out on any thread I expressed any thought on, making outlandish claims that I am biased against anyone of anyone having a differing view than myself and somehow stretching this to equate to be some type of a personal attack that may have a different opinion. Weird, I know. However, it gets worse. I would post announcements regarding local activity social events, etc., and the person began filling my private messages with nasty, rude, hateful messages. I reported her. Apparently, a lead had put a stop to it... for a few weeks. Suddenly, it began again only this time she also started texting my phone as well. I reported her to the leads again, detailing what is going on. In response, I received a message from one of the leads, the person's neighbor, who informed me the harasser was claiming I was the one doing the harassing. I have screenshots of the messages sent to me, proving I never initiated or engaged in the communication. The lead responded that it is my fault for failing to get along with the person harassing me. Seriously? Is this the type of website Nextdoor has allowed itself to be? There should be a much better quality website that has safeguards in place to protect its subscribers against this type of behavior.

It's all ridiculous. People hide behind a computer and feel they maintain power and entitlement; their real life is petty and inadequate. Start a group and make your own content. Better yet, find or start a meet-up.com group

If you can't talk this maverick Lead into changing practices or quitting, then you'll have to gang together and convince Nextdoor to do something nasty. That's really about it. The problem for you is whether this Lead serves Nextdoor's purposes or not. Their reaction will either be to severely scold you for not accepting this Lead's "best intentions", or they will cheerfully work with you behind closed doors to decide who the new Leads will be. And then summarily axe the Lead you don't like. Whether this Lead is carefully following the Guidelines or not is irrelevant to them. Nextdoor is looking to be your neighborhood's dominant social network, and they'll betray the Leads if they've come to Nextdoor to form an alternate forum.
http://www.dawsonneighborhood.org/save-dawsonaustin/

I was having an issue with my Nextdoor's ham handed policy on whole cloth erasure of entire threads. To completely delete entire threads when one or two posts might have been strongly worded is absurd. The Leads in my community want to clean up the boards and present a false perception that we live with the Beaver.

In my attempt to stop this practice of censorship, I was terminated. And here's the reason I got from corporate.

"Im reaching out today because your neighbors have notified us that youve posted messages to the main newsfeed discussing your Leads actions.
I understand that you may feel frustrated and compelled to open this up to discussion with your neighbors, especially if you feel as though your contributions arent being honored by your Lead.
That being said, to ensure your neighbors have a positive and helpful experience on Nextdoor, the newsfeed should only be used to discuss general topics of local interest, rather than specific personal disagreements. As a result, weve set some Guidelines regarding how disagreements with Leads should be resolved.
In a nutshell, please do not post about why your post was reported or removed in the main newsfeed. Instead, you should:
Contact the Leads in your neighborhood for clarification.
If you are not able to resolve the issue with the help of your Lead, then contact Nextdoor Support.
You may wish to create a Nextdoor Policies Group to discuss community moderation with your neighbors.
Ive gone ahead and removed the reported content.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best,

Amanda
Nextdoor"

My response...

"sorry Amanda, never happened... "Im reaching out today because your neighbors have notified us that youve posted messages to the main newsfeed discussing your Leads actions."

I simply pointed out how inactive the leads to my community have been, via their lack of posting activity. This is information Nextdoor provides to ALL who bother to look. I posted nothing more personal than that. No names were mentioned, simply how inactive they have been and questioned if they were the best representatives for the community. And for this you eliminate an ENITRE thread that was discussing Nextdoor's practices of censorship? If this is information you don't want available, you should not readily provide it to the community. I violated NOBODY's rights to privacy."

Corporate is terrified for users to realize who it is that is censoring their public posts. Corporate wants to keep us all ignorant regarding who is really sitting in judgement of you. People in my community kept brushing off my concerns repeatedly stating that "THEY" decide how "THEY" want their website structured. "THEY" this and "THEY" that. I pointed out that the corporate office in San Francisco could give a rat's $#*! about some small town in Kentucky. I was summarily yanked before I could get people to realize just who was pulling the strings. The Leads reported me the minute I questioned their roles.

LET'S HAVE FACTS HERE! Nextdoor’s SF staff tend to be two-faced. Me and all my co-leads were "fired" by San Franciso's Strause for posting too many breaking crime incidents in Sacramento.

The founding Lead never lived in our neighborhood and asked to be the Lead where she does live and serves on the board of her Neighborhood Assoc. For 2 1/2 years Nextdoor REFUSED so she had to do it herself by changing addresses. By the way, she had invited over 1,300 neighbors to ND.

Last word from Gordon Strause to me before I've been TOTALLY BLOCKED but I refuse to deactivate my account. I still get emails but cannot reply to tem or private messages from crime victims or officers.

“We are likely going to change the role of Lead in the future so that it’s not one size fits all. Instead, we are likely to evolve to a more distributed system where different Leads will have responsibility for different aspects of Nextdoor. When that happens, we are likely to create a Lead role specifically focused on mobilizing neighbors crime prevention.

When that happens, you will be the obvious choice for that role. In fact, given your passion for this issue, I suspect you would actually prefer a role that would allow you to focus on that subject without having to worry about the other aspects of being a Lead today.”

I have been director of the longest operating Community Watch Patrols in Sacramento. http://crimewatch.us has been serving my neighbors and police officers for 21 years. Perhaps polling our 4,500 members about our sex offender corrupt mayor played a role in all this. ND is now blocking ALL messages from the very police officers and their command I work with on the streets 3 to 4 nights a week from 10pm to 3am.

ND is not off the hook by a long shot. We’re not Borg – We’re not a collective – Resistance is NOT Futile.

Remember, this is like a private club you join with rules, etc. From what I've researched, Nextdoor.com executives don't take this as seriously as you would think, especially since you are not paying any dues or fee's to be on their site.

My concern in my own neighborhood Lead is that she is a city council member here in Napa and Vice Mayor! I am awaiting a response from the executives as to their stance on elected officials who are Leads in the first place, and deleting/censoring comments on political posts or protesting the political Lead on the site FOR censorship. Stay tuned

I too have censored by power-hungry, authoritarian leads. They remove posts without notification, without explanation, and without identifying themselves. It's like the nazis.

I agree with most here. The website is full of people's personal baggage and vindication. The leads are power hungry because they have NOTHING ELSE to focus on! I have been threatened and personally attacked for my opinions and help. Turns out that one of the leads is my business competitor! SAY NO MORE! Dangerous and harmful.

This is written from the perspective of a Lead at ND - a former Lead. I was asked to be a Lead for ND last December 12th and I accepted. I'd been on the job for two and a half-months when I was unduluy attacked and cyber-bulied for having mentioned in a comment on a post I didn't create that Agenda 21 was responsible for bike installations suddenly appearing in San Francisco in many different neighborhoods, unasked for and unannounced. Commenters outside my neighborhood attacked me for "conspiracy theory," for being a "racist," for being stupid and ruining NextDoor.com for my single comment. Eight people from different neighborhoods joined in on repeated attacks.

My role as Lead allowed me to delete those comments that went against community guidelines but NextDoor would not allow me to report the individuals responsible for going against the community guidellines because these members were outside my neighborhood, thus giiving ND members outside my neighborhood the license to "bomb" me over and over again, trying to incite conflict, create public shaming and harassment -- with no protecttion offered by ND on this.

In fact, in order to obtain assistance from a specialist at ND, you have to email a specialist who takes up to 48 hours to respond. Based on my experience, the advice these specialists offer amounts to nil. One specialist named Chester actually wrote that all you can do as a Lead is to remind people of the guidelines, but "they usually resent you for reminding them." That's it? No help? Right -- no help!

I deleted my account yesterday when I discovered ND uses Leads as slaves to assist them with the management of the platform, offering, of course, no pay, but no protection as well. Roman slaves had no protection. Early Colonial Period slaves also had no protection. Nothing has changed in the age of technology concerning NextDoor.com.

As for being a regular member and commenter, unless you want to chat mindlessly about your love of dogs and cats, brag about your endless volunteerism for the community, or want to behave like a common thug and attack and bully for your own pleasure, there's very little for the normal human being at NextDoor.com. It should shut itself down, but it's too stupid to know this.

I gave names of the cyber-bullies to ND specialists. No one at ND acknowledged the names nor any intention of doing anything about the members who are deliberately non-compliant with ND's community guidelines.

NextDoor. Com is only for a nest of vipers.

I would go to the Nextdoor webpage and contact the organization, they will intervene.

I used to like Nextdoor for the most part since I can post to help and post to get help for a lot of things. Until yesterday. I. e.(August 2,2020).
Due to the recent social unrest and riots, I started feeling unsafe and wanted to get a gun, my first every. But local stores are running low on stock. So I posted on Nextdoor and my great neighbors came to my rescue with very good recommendations. However, one lady said she was concerned "that so many people around here are buying guns". First of all, for those already have guns that came to my help, they already have guns! Secondly, the entire thread only addresses my concern to get my first gun. But the site, without informing me, just deleted my post yesterday afternoon. Last night I posted a complaining message, and now I am kicked out of the site! I have NEVER been removed from any site for any reason. Are we in a state where freedom of speech is no longer respected? And being 'politically correct' supersedes everything?!
This is both upsetting and scary.

I have also had bad experiences on Nextdoor re: censorship. I can see how many folks on one side of the political spectrum get to spam the boards with multiple repeat posts in multiple threads (violating both the sandboxing and overposting guidelines) and are pretty nasty in their posts as well, but when a few folks on the other side of the political spectrum try to argue their case against these posts with well-reasoned arguments, they get shot down with more nasty posts, and then get reported and the nearby neighborhood leads get to "vote" on what to do with reported posts. If those leads are mostly of the same political persuasion, which often happens in certain areas, they can control content. They allow personal attacks to stand if they are directed at someone they know is of the opposing political viewpoint and then ban the person who responds to just say "stop it" because someone reported that post as a "personal dispute". I wouldn't have believed it myself had I not experienced it. I am not going to say what side of the political spectrum is which, because I am guessing it happens in one direction in some areas, and in the other direction in other areas.

I suspect that when Nextdoor started they first contacted city leaders to act as the initial lead. That means that those leaders essentially control the group and the feedback.