Citizen App Denies Staff Pretended to Be Residents in Crime Livestreams

Citizen, the vigilante crime-awareness app, has been using its own staff members as regular citizens in its "OnAir" livestreams, a new report has found. The company has denied any misleading to Newsweek but also promised to improve its transparency.

The app was introduced in 2016 under the name "Vigilante" and was originally presented as a crime-fighting app of sorts. In its first advertisement, the app showed users finding a criminal and stopping a crime after the app alerted them about a woman being attacked nearby. It was soon removed from app stores after being widely criticized by police.

In 2017, the app rebranded as "Citizen," this time presenting as an app which simply makes people aware of nearby crime to avoid, and made clear that they don't encourage vigilante crime-fighters to take the law into their own hands

Citizen sends push notifications to its 7 million users across 30 cities, alerting them of crimes in their local areas—some of which are confirmed, and others which are not. Workers use police scanner audios to upload incidents to the app, but users are also able to post their own too.

The app introduced its "OnAir" feature in April, which is essentially a make-shift live news channel of larger crimes. A presenter hosts the show, providing live updates and even speaking to app users who are at the location.

Critics of the app have previously labelled it scare-mongering and accused it of inciting anxiety and unnecessary fear in people.

If that fear ever gets too much for a user, they can conveniently purchase the $20 "Protect" subscription on the app, which tracks users' location and puts them in contact with a readily available Citizen worker when activated. The safety of people is also a concern, with fears users will choose to take crime-fighting into their own hands, despite the app's recommendation not to.

Daily Dot reported that the app uses staff as onscene broadcasters, under the guise that they are just regular citizens nearby. The media outlet noticed an app user named Landon had appeared on two livestreams in one day—the first at 9 a.m. in a search for a sword-wielding man, and another four hours later in a search for a man accused of shooting someone.

He's interviewed by the presenter, Rob, about what's happening but it's never mentioned that he works for Citizen or that he happened to livestream earlier in the day too.

Landon has actually appeared regularly on the Citizen app from various different scenes on various dates. During one video, "Citizen user Landon1129" claims to have just been nearby when he received a Citizen report about the incident.

In a statement to Newsweek, Citizen said: "Citizen has teams in place in some of the cities where the app is available to demonstrate how the platform works, and to model responsible broadcasting practices in situations when events are unfolding in real time. We believe these teams will ultimately help guide our users on how to broadcast in an effective, helpful and safe way. Landon is a part of this team."

Citizen reiterated the use of Street Teams as an educational method for users to learn how to use the app and its features themselves, having had the teams since the app's inception.

It also denied any intentional misleading on their behalf, saying its Street Teams have never been "hidden."

In 2019, three years before OnAir was introduced, The New York Times cited a 2017 job listing posted by the company, looking for a "Freelance Smartphone Reporter" to join "a new kind of street team." In that article, an anonymous former Street Team worker spoke to the outlet, and alleged that "he was told not to claim he was working for Citizen."

The broadcasting Street Team are seemingly never explicitly introduced as staff, but instead as "someone live on the ground," nor is their employment mentioned throughout.

Although Citizen has not previously spoken openly about streamers being staff—something is not made clear to viewers.

It isn't the first time the app's livestreaming users have been questioned around their legitimacy either.

As reported by Vice, in May the app orchestrated a live mission to find missing autistic teenager, Jeremiah, in New York City. Citizen started one of its OnAir shows, with a presenter reading live updates and tips and interviewing users on the ground.

Much to the success of Citizen's reputation, two users found Jeremiah at a Target store, and took him home in their car after he agreed to leave with them. The users broadcasted the whole thing, and called his mom and grandma on-air too.

The finding of the teen was rightfully received well by users, making it the second time in recent months a missing person has been found via Citizen, after a Brooklyn man was recognised by an app user on June 26.

However, the two users who found Jeremiah were also Citizen workers, rather than regular users of the app. Although this hadn't been out-right denied in the broadcast, it also didn't make it clear, leaving viewers naturally assuming they were users just like them.

At the time of Vice's publication, Citizen was yet to publicly confirm the existence of this team within the OnAir feature, and sources told Vice they "believe the purpose of the Street Team is to make regular users think they could get involved too, so they will start broadcasting their own footage."

The "OnAir" feature also came under fire in May, when Citizen put a large-scale live-show hunt on to find the alleged arsonist behind an Los Angeles wildfire. They offered a $30,000 bounty for whoever finds the man, who they had named themselves. The only problem? They got the wrong guy, publicly naming and putting a bounty on an innocent man for a crime he didn't commit.

Citizen may not have made any black-and-white errors with their use of workers in the live-streams, and the morality behind it all is up for grabs, but it will only fuel those already dubious about the app's benefit to society.

In the future, Citizen plans to improve its transparency around Street Teams, in order to make it clearer to users of the app, the company told Newsweek.