Facebook launches Neighborhoods, a Nextdoor clone

Facebook is launching a new section of its app designed to connect neighbors and curate neighborhood-level news. The new feature, predictably called Neighborhoods, is available now in Canada and will be rolling out soon for U.S. users to test.

As we reported previously, Neighborhoods has technically been around since at least October of last year, but that limited test only recruited residents of Calgary, Canada.

On Neighborhoods, Facebook users can create a separate subprofile and can populate it with interests and a custom bio. You can join your own lower-case neighborhood and nearby neighborhoods and complain about porch pirates, kids these days, or whatever you’d otherwise be doing on Nextdoor.

Aware of the intense moderation headaches on Nextdoor, Facebook says that it will have a set of moderators dedicated to Neighborhoods to review comments and posts to keep matters “relevant and kind.” Within Neighborhoods neighborhoods, deputized users can steer and strike up conversations and do some light moderation, it sounds like. The new corner of Facebook will also come with blocking features.

As far as privacy goes, well, it’s Facebook. Neighborhoods isn’t its own standalone app and will naturally be sharing your neighborly behavior to serve you targeted ads elsewhere.