Nextdoor chief executive Sarah Friar says if the UK takes any risk, it can make the most of the next big wave of technological innovation. Photo: Rachel Adams for The Telegraph
ChatGPT technology encourages people to be more polite online and could reduce the number of users sending insults, said head of social media app Nextdoor.
Sarah Friar, chief executive, said that the company's early integration tests with the chatbot showed signs that it encourages users to be more polite.
In recent weeks, Nextdoor began integrating OpenAI-built ChatGPT into its social network, and last month the technology spread throughout the UK.
The technology scans messages and suggests changing them to be more polite if it detects they might be offensive or hurtful.
Ms Friar said about a third of people who saw the “kindness reminder” in the app, were ready to edit their posts.
“[AI] leads people along the way. Quite a significant number of people who want to accept the proposed changes, ”she said.
“The early signs are very positive, otherwise we wouldn't be continuing the rollout around the world.”
She said that AI could push people to soften their language. “What I'm hoping for is if we can get more people to say, 'I want my point to be made, but I don't want it to be deleted.' To do this, I need to say the word “please.” It's in the spirit of really trying to stay on the cutting edge when it comes to areas like moderation.”
With 42 million users, including one in four households in the UK, Nextdoor became the first major social network to implement ChatGPT when it launched the integration in May and rolled it out to a quarter of its users in the UK. last month.
The system was trained on Nextdoor's own messages and designed with regional significance in mind. For example, users in Scotland will not see their messages rewritten in American English.
CV | Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar
The chatbot also suggests rewriting messages to make them more readable, for example if users write in a second language. “I think a lot of people don't want to go out of their way to contact people you don't know often,” Ms Friar said.
“If we help you make this initial post, you will really gather the right people around you. It's good, especially when we have all this loneliness.”
Nextdoor, which was created in 2008, requires users to enter address details, showing them messages from all over their region.
The app is kind of like a digital parish where people ask for trade recommendations, send out lost pet alerts and try to get rid of used tech, as well as the inevitable hyper-local groans of fireworks, neighborhood lawns and potholes. .
It was one of the first social networks to scan messages before they were posted, in an attempt to weed out offensive comments, after gaining a reputation—deserved or not—for petty or mean messages.
One viral Twitter account, Best of Nextdoor, chronicles its most outrageous deeds to the annoyance of company executives.
Ms Friar, 50, grew up in rural Tyrone . , Northern Ireland, took over the company in 2018 after six years as CFO of Square, the payments company founded by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
She took an unusual route to Silicon Valley. Ms Friar's parents were a nurse and HR manager at a local factory and were the first person in her family to go to university when she studied metallurgy at Oxford, worked briefly in a gold mine in Ghana and at McKinsey in South Africa, before a Stanford MBA sent her to California.
She was an analyst at Goldman Sachs before being hired by Salesforce's Marc Benioff, despite being one of the few people who recommended that investors sell the company.
Sarah Friar's path to the top job at a Silicon Valley tech company includes jobs in Ghana, South Africa and Stanford College. Photo: Gabriela Hasbun
Half a life in Silicon Valley means that the Northern Irish accent has been flattened by the Californian gnats. Ms Friar said her upbringing during The Troubles convinced her that people needed uncomfortable conversations. “I'm from Northern Ireland and I think it's really important that people talk about difficult things. Otherwise, you will never get to things like peace in our country.”
However, she dismisses the caricature of the app as a focus of busy bodies pulling curtains.
“The fact that we live in one in four households in the UK, one in three in London tells me that this is a great product and that people are benefiting from the platform itself,” she said. “Very, very little content on Nextdoor is actually offensive or harmful.”
Part of that success, according to Ms. Friar, is the anonymity ban, which requires users to display their full name. “A lot of research shows that when we are ourselves, it's much easier to be a little better,” she added.
“Embarrassment that maybe, you know, I was blunt with my roommate online and then maybe bumped into him at a coffee shop. That element of accountability, I think, helps you be more constructive.”
Ms Friar is perhaps unique among social media executives in supporting an upcoming state Internet safety law that will take steps to combat anonymous trolls, but will not ban anonymity on the Internet.
“I really like how they have unified digital regulation in the UK,” she said. “This is a world-leading rule that I think the whole world should pay attention to. They said one size doesn't fit all.”
Nextdoor remains small compared to social media giants like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, both in terms of user numbers and investor confidence .
The company floated in the US in 2021 in a Spac reverse merger deal that valued the company at $4.3bn (£3.4bn), but investors now value the company at $1.3bn, reflecting a decline in many of the much-touted tech flotation.
Nextdoor, however, has rebounded this year with shares up 61% and Ms Friar said she has no regrets about joining the Spac craze.
“At the end of the day, for quality companies, it doesn’t really matter how you go public, what matters is that you are public, you have the liquidity of a public company, you raise money, which gives you that flexibility,” she said. .
“Over time, the market will see what an amazing asset Nextdoor is.”
Fryar at least has the luxury of running a Silicon Valley company. She says the UK tech industry can still catch up, especially on diversity, where men make up 91% of CEOs, and on encouraging risk.
“It’s such a cheesy Silicon Valley phrase, but so many celebrating failure, there is acceptance and understanding that with failure comes so much knowledge.”
However, Ms Friar, who returns home regularly, said the UK has a great opportunity to take advantage of the AI boom as companies like OpenAI open offices in London.
“Definitely time to take some risks to get investment and start letting some of these companies fly. If the UK plays its cards right, it can really take part in this new big wave.”
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