Day 101: Our Data Is a Commodity. Why Are We Giving It Away?
Day 101.
Today I want to strip this Nextdoor discussion down to basic economics.
If I have something of value, another party uses it, and that use generates revenue, why shouldn't I share in the value created?
In this case, the commodity is information.
Reviews are information.
Recommendations are information.
Posts, comments, neighborhood observations, business experiences, and local knowledge are information.
Collectively, that's user-generated content.
And when a platform can aggregate, organize, analyze, and monetize that information, those individual contributions can become economically valuable.
We Call It “Content.” But It's Also an Economic Input.
Suppose I recommend a plumber on Nextdoor.
I supplied the experience. I paid to hire the plumber. I evaluated the work. I spent my time writing the recommendation.
Another neighbor reads it.
The plumber potentially gets business.
Nextdoor gets engagement and another piece of local knowledge stored within its platform.
Now multiply that by millions of neighbors and years of participation.
Suddenly, what looks like individual posts becomes something much more interesting:
An asset.
And with AI making it increasingly possible to organize, summarize, and extract useful information from enormous collections of human-created knowledge, that accumulated information may become even more useful.
I'm Not Saying Nextdoor Shouldn't Profit
Quite the opposite.
I'm a shareholder. I want Nextdoor to make money.
Nextdoor built the technology. It operates the platform. It employs people, develops products, sells advertising, and assumes the financial risk of running the business.
Nextdoor should benefit from the value it creates.
My question is:
Why does that automatically mean the neighbor gets zero?
If my contribution becomes part of something commercially valuable, why couldn't there be a model where:
Nextdoor wins.
Shareholders win.
Businesses win.
And the neighbors supplying the information win too.
I'm not suggesting every post deserves a royalty check.
But reviews, recommendations, local knowledge, research participation, and other user-generated information that contributes to commercial value?
Let's have that conversation.
Until Then, Maybe We Stop Supplying the Commodity
That's the idea behind my Neighbor Value-Sharing Petition.
The petition asks Nextdoor users to voluntarily stop providing new routine data, business reviews, recommendations, and other commercial user-generated content until Nextdoor develops a meaningful way for neighbors to participate in the revenue and value their contributions help generate.
It's not about withholding emergency information, safety alerts, missing-person information or other important community communication.
It's about the commodity.
If our information has value, perhaps we should stop giving that value away for free until there's a conversation about sharing it.
Read and sign the petition:
Then share it with another Nextdoor user.
Nextdoor Built the Container. Neighbors Keep Filling It.
A platform without people is software.
A review platform without reviews is an empty database.
A neighborhood network without neighbors sharing neighborhood knowledge isn't much of a neighborhood network.
Nextdoor built the container.
Neighbors keep filling it.
If what's inside that container can be monetized, I think it's reasonable for the people supplying it to ask:
Where's our share?
Until Nextdoor is willing to have that conversation, I'm asking neighbors to consider something incredibly simple:
Don't provide the commodity.
No new routine reviews.
No new business recommendations.
No additional commercial data.
Then let's see how valuable the commodity becomes when the people producing it decide they want to share in its value.
Our data. Our knowledge. Our time. Our value.
👉 Sign the petition:
https://c.org/GkNWmffgg9
👉 More of my continuing Nextdoor case study:
NielFlamm.com/blog