Online and off, Edd to a world of social

Businessman adds website manager and

Edd Withers will turn 30 in March. Having arrived in Canterbury a decade ago, he has studied forensic investigation at university, organised student events, established his own company and restarted the city’s Pride festival.

But it is as the administrator of the Canterbury Residents Group page on Facebook that he is best known.

It launched on the social media site more than two years ago and over the weekend welcomed its 10,000th member.

The page is a cacophony of voices from across the city flitting between subjects with all the randomness of life.

One moment members are discussing the city council’s plans for parking, the next they’re tearing chunks out of each other over Brexit or making requests for information such as: “Has anyone got the number for Swale Heating?”

Edd, who lives in the city centre, says: “Social media really is just a representation of life.

“The group gets 50 posts a day. I get a notification about every single one of them and read them all. It takes a lot of my time up.

“I try to take a hands-off approach to it. If adults want to call each other silly names in an argument, then that’s up to them.

“Sometimes people complain that I haven’t removed posts or comments they don’t like. But if you’re in a pub and someone said something you didn’t like, you’d walk away, not go and complain to the barman.”

There are things that the Canterbury Residents Group will not tolerate – what Edd defines as “hate speech” – which usually amounts to racism. Threats of violence are also unacceptable.

Edd admits there is little of that compared to what occupies much of his time as the group’s administrator – adverts.

“I don’t mean proper advertising, I mean people just going on there and advertising their wares or