tone of Nextdoor posts

Since the beginning of February, there's been a noticeable change in the type of email notifications I get through Nextdoor. Previously they were mostly topics like:

- Hi neighbors! New to the site (or neighborhood)
- Missing or found dog/cat
- Problem with tap water or other utilities
- Looking for work / offering services / don't hire this person/company
- Looking for / offering to give away something for free
- What kind of snake/plant/flower is this?

Now they are mostly mood-lowering topics like:

- home broken in to
- car stolen
- suspicious people seen on driveway or trespassing
- mail / packages stolen or damaged

I like being able to hear news from the neighborhood. But this shift in tone of the messages has me considering turning off notifications completely. Then I'd probably only ever visit the site if I have a topic of my own to post, or to check if anyone else has posted about something I'm curious about.

I'm not clear if there has been a real shift in the topics being posted about, or only in the notifications sent to me. The latter might be due to some Facebook-like algorithm based on which messages I've clicked to read on the website. Anyone else who uses the site noticed this recent shift in tone of notifications?

Another thing I see is that many of the more recent messages reference other areas of town, not my particular neighborhood. The older messages I see don't reference any particular areas so I can't tell about them. But I haven't changed my Nextdoor settings regarding which areas I want to receive messages from.

In my Nextdoor settings, all notifications are turned on except "For Sale & Free" and "Digests". So before now, I must never have felt a need to switch anything else off. There's a "Popular everywhere" item at the bottom... maybe this is new? Well, I've turned that one off now. I'll see if it makes a difference.

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This was another recent message: "Did anyone hear about the kidnapping at [...] elementary?"

Based on the above, it sounded like more bad news. But the rest of the post, when I clicked to read it, was, "It's fine, he woke up!". ::groan:: ::but amused::

That post now, like many others when I later click on them, says "Sorry, the post you're looking for has been removed."