New Yorkers can reportedly earn up to $200 a day by doing an unusual task. To earn this type of money, they'll have to rush to a scene of the murder, a three-alarm traffic accident or fire, and pull out their phones to start filming. Black Mirror anyone?
New Yorkers Can Earn from Livestreaming Crime Scenes
According to New York Post, however, this is what the controversial neighborhood watch app Citizen is doing. The app is quietly hiring New Yorkers to go out and livestream crime scenes as well as other emergencies in an effort to help encourage ordinary citizens to do the exact same.
Citizen has been able to raise a whopping $133 million from certain high-profile backers just like Peter Thiel, as also reported by CBSnews, and the Silicon Valley venture firms known as Greycroft and Capital. This is by promising real-time safety alerts for users wherever they live and work.
Citizen was Known as 'Vigilante'
The vast majority of the alerts, which include videos, appear to come directly from volunteers who had just happened to be near the scene of the crime. The app's business model, which comes through the declining coverage of news by journalists, can save the company money. Citizen previously gave alerts to users in real time of crimes happening around the area.
The app has previously been called "Vigilante" and even boasts over 7 million users stretched across 30 citries. The app is also quietly recruiting some field team members on the journalism job sites in order to run around the city and chase emergencies. For those that have seen Emma Robberts "Nerve" movie, well, there's some similarity with how users can view crimes happening live.
Full Time Crime Livestreamer
A certain user named Chris going by @cgutter_ has spent a day biking around the Bronx in order to report at least six emergencies. This included a bloody bus wreck over on Morris Avenue and a report of gunshots on East 175th Street. Chris has already streamed a whopping 1,600 videos and was able to rack up 1.52 million views, as seen on his profile.
When asked about Chris' frequent streaming on the app, a certain spokeswoman from Citizen acknowledged last week that he actually works for the company. Chris, however, is not flagged as a Citizen app employee but rather appears to be just another "concerned New Yorker." In other news, who could forget the top Black Mirror episodes like "Smithereens" wherein it covered how social media and crime work together.
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Citizen Job Post
The spokeswoman noted that Citizen has teams already in place in a number of cities where the app is already available in order to demonstrate exactly how the platform works. This is also to model responsible broadcasting practices in certain situations when events are being unfolded in real time.
Citizen also notes that it does not hide its use of paid field team members. The company also does not have any job postings on its own Website. Citizen's name was also not included in a deleted job posting on JournalismJobs.com which was seeking out "field team members" to work for an unnamed "tech company" that reportedly had user-generated content.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian B.
