My family recently moved to a new neighborhood. Since I spend most waking hours staring silently at a computer screen, I’m a pretty ideal neighbor. The same cannot be said of my two beagles and three cats. Within a few weeks of us moving in, just about all of our neighbors had experienced our vocal menagerie of degenerates firsthand. And just about all of our them reacted with kindness and good humor. That’s the offline story. Like most stories these days, the online story would probably be worse. Violent crime levels have been going down in America. But people perceive those levels as going up. That contradiction is nothing new. But it could be dramatically exacerbated by the proliferation of a new kind of social network that connects you to your neighbors — without you ever leaving the house. Rani Molla in Recode: The rise of fear-based social media like Nextdoor, Citizen, and now Amazon’s Neighbors. In theory, these apps are providing a layer of protection. But they could also be creating a much thicker layer of fear. Like my beagles, local crime’s bark is probably worse than its bite.