Facebook posts in Arbery trial reflect online neighbor fear

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST and RUSS BYNUM
Associated Press

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Months before Ahmaud Arbery was killed, shooter Travis McMichael posted a simple, chilling response to a Facebook post about a suspected car burglary on his Georgia neighborhood: “Arm up.” The post he commented on came between chats about lost dogs and water service interruption, like in many other online neighborhood social media groups. In the year before Arbery’s death, the group’s Facebook posts portray a subdivision increasingly on edge over low-level incidents, with neighbors swapping suspicions and becoming willing to take matters into their own hands. Amid broad re-examination of race, criminal justice and the role of technology, online neighborhood forums around the U.S. have a troubling tendency to veer from wholesome community chitchat to anxious hypervigilance.