In case people are missing the broader point of the article, beyond the horrifying incident at the beginning:<p><i>"The whole idea behind Protect is that you could convince people to pay for the product once you’ve gotten them to the highest point of anxiety you can possibly get them to," one former employee said, referring to Citizen's subscription service. "Citizen can’t make money unless it makes its users believe there are constant, urgent threats around them at all times,"</i><p>...<p><i>Citizen incentivizes both its employees and the public to create incidents because they are the core currency of the app and what drives user engagement, user retention, and a sense of reliance on the app itself.</i><p>...<p><i>"It’s basically an anxiety sweatshop," a Citizen source said. "On days when things are 'slow,' they relax the standards around incidents because a dip in incident count is really bad," they added. The company sends congratulatory emails announcing which analysts reported the highest number of incidents, another source added.</i><p>...<p><i>A former employee added, "They don’t much care about the accuracy or the usefulness of the information they put out, they just want to push as many notifications to create that feeling of vulnerability that leads people to the subscription services."</i>
<i>> Citizen, using a new livestreaming service it had just launched called OnAir, would catch the suspect live on air, with thousands of people watching.</i><p>I'm sorry, is this describing real life or an episode of Black Mirror? It's so blatantly dystopian that I'm at a loss for words.
It's crazy watching the world turn into a dystopia and being powerless to stop it. It not just about this company. If they fail another will replace it. Society seems to be on a convergent path with dystopian scifi. This, Chicago police automated policing program (detects crime before it happenes and actually hurt innocent people), racially biased facial recognition.
I read an article today about some DNA software being used to convict someone to death row. His legal team couldn't view the source code to challenge its probabalistic accuracy.<p>It doesn't seem like there is even a place to start. A first step could be making a website that documents and tracks all these things then forming a pac. But how long will the take before and if it starts effecting change
> Citizen does moderate comments, but "two people having an argument about whether or not someone’s comment is racist drives engagement,"<p>LOL, my publicist does this on linkedin and other places for us because people are gullible.<p>Source article: Executive of <Company> does a thing<p>0 engagement, nobody knows<p>Social Media version: [First] <Race> Executive of <Company> does a thing<p>15,000 comments, 2 million reach, supporters and detractors argue with each other on the headline creating more engagement. Messages role in. Its perfect and yes we think you are all dumb. Always remember who is shaking the bottle that you’re inside of.
While many employees at Citizen felt the Pacific Palisades incident was a huge mistake, Andrew Frame looked at it differently. While Frame showed some contrition, he sees the bounty experiment as a "massive net win," a step on the way for his app to become a private safety network that is "going into what the government is failing to do," which is, in the company's mind, failing to keep people safe, according to his Slack response to Prince.<p>-----<p>Citizen's culture seems fundamentally rotten and I think I understand why with this CEO.
About 5 years ago I met these guys when I was building a smart city startup in NYC. We helped cities unify their data from various vendors they use, one of the data streams was a computerized 911 dispatch. Vigilante (at the time) was interested in getting access to the 911 dispatch API. I had a long conversation with them and they couldn't understand/answer any difficult questions - I was extremely uncomfortable- nevertheless, I took it to a few cities and floated the idea of allowing them to tap in, some cities seemed marginally interested but wanted to provide access to the data with a 10+ minute delay on it so as to prevent ambulance chasing/vigilantism... of course this was useless to them, they needed real time, so they stuck to transcribing 911 dispatch from the radio waves.<p>Given they couldn't/wouldn't ask basic questions about safety, I'm not at all surprised this is happening.
I know this is beside the main point of the article - but the fact that the CEO's surname is Frame is one of these truth is stranger than fiction moments. If you wrote up a drama about someone writing an app like this and gave the CEO that surname you'd be called a hack.
Well, the app was originally called Vigilante with the goal of enabling... mob justice. So, this really isn't surprising.<p>Applying contemporary growth hacking and engagement techniques to making people feel afraid and seek private security is just abominable. LA county is 10 million people - there are going to be all kinds of criminal activities on any given day, but rarely anywhere close to you. The app though will make sure even a minor thing a few miles from you gets you revved up. Just a recipe for more social disfunction.<p>The worst part is that LA county and city decided to use Citizen for contract tracing during the pandemic, which drove up downloads in the LA: <a href="https://covid19.lacounty.gov/covid19-news/la-county-city-leaders-join-forces-citizen-launch-safepass-partnership/" rel="nofollow">https://covid19.lacounty.gov/covid19-news/la-county-city-lea...</a> - they really need to push back on this vigilante stuff now.
> The staffer who brought up the terms of service violation was ignored in that specific Slack room, and the broadcast continued<p>This sums up my experience with diverse opinions and observations in tech companies
To clarify: the bounty was $10-30k for information leading to a specific suspect's arrest. When I first heard about it, it sounded like the bounty was a 'dead or alive' kind of thing.
American HN readers: Is everything alright? It seems a new kind of on-the-edge over there. Does it truly feel unsafe to the extent that people resort to violent and intrusive systems like these?
We talk a lot about mobs here. It seems someone has monetized the mob. Not only am I disappointed in the proponents of mobs and call out culture, but I am doubly disappointed in the people who profit from them. Social media, Citizen/Vigilante, to the mainstream news.<p>We are so lost.
> "It plays into people’s anxieties and fears and magnifies people’s fears of the other ...<p>Sound's like they have a winning formula if Facebook is any indication of successful tech.
> In Slack messages viewed by Motherboard, Frame calls ProtectOS, the system Citizen uses to create incidents and push them out to users, "the most powerful operating system ever created."<p>Sounds like the fictional CTOS from the Watch_Dogs games.
Perhaps this is a mere symptom of some other problem.
In Canada I dont personally recall witnessing crime in my adult life. If I saw someone doing something criminal today I would just you know... call the cops.<p>Perhaps in the USA the lived experience is somewhat different? Maybe more crime? Maybe the police dont show up?
This shit needs to be shut down. All it's doing is manufacturing a new normal for society to always be on edge and to encourage spying on their neighbors.
Reading this made me think, 'Wouldn't it be nice if there was an app that just called out people for doing generous/friendly/artistic/impressive things locally?'
I want to try my hand at the n-gate.com summary for this one:<p>"Some webshits finish The Wire and answer the question we've all been wondering since the finale aired: why didn't the Baltimore Police simply write an app to crowdsource 'juking the stats'? Citizen (Uber for Reddit's Boston Bomber Fiasco) is born, but Apple doesn't have time to review it as they are busy finishing their own dystopian surveillance nightmare-- Airtag (Uber for Stalking). Luckily, an American HN arrives to remind everyone that actual crime has been falling since the 90s. Given the low probability of anything bad ever happening in the U.S. due widespread misperception of the truth, HN moves on to a story about adtech delivery speedups on client machines."
> In addition, we are focused on reducing the reach of notifications about violent incidents, and increasing the reach of notifications about incidents such as missing people or pets being reunited with their families—we could all use some more good news.<p>"We would rather provide engaging info than useful info." At least they're honest.
Here's what I think will happen if their "on-demand protection" service launches: Someone will eventually get killed, they will either shut down that service or completely, then the executive(s) won't face any charges.<p>Even Batman had the decency of asking private citizens to not engage in vigilantism.
It feels like the fiction novel The Circle (by Dave Eggers) was used as a handbook to create a company.<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18302455-the-circle" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18302455-the-circle</a>
> "They don’t much care about the accuracy or the usefulness of the information they put out, they just want to push as many notifications to create that feeling of vulnerability that leads people to the subscription services."<p>But it's somehow not a problem when professional "journalists" do it?
Wow, even without the strong tone of <i>"hustle"</i> and <i>move fast and break things</i>, there is just so much potential for abuse and/or horrible mistakes.<p>And that's without even accounting for the fundamentally fear-based business model.
When got to about a third of the way through this article, I started to wonder if this was some kind of fictional dystopian thought piece. It is not.<p>How is this legal? The capacity for this to go wrong and hurt people is so damn high
at the very end:<p>> Frame said at the all-hands that he is still performing a manhunt for the person Citizen falsely accused, but this time in order to apologize.<p>> "We need to find this person and we are actively looking to find him. We are not done when it comes to this person," notes from the all-hands say. "Andrew [Frame] said they are working on that and this has the chance to turn into a very happy moment."<p>Someone has a giant ego and doesn't understand they fucked up. Trying to still find this guy and put a camera in his face...
Anyone else think we should jail the entire company in the name of public safety? We have officers who actually work for the government running roughshod over individuals why would we allow corporations to do this?