Citizen app is paying 'street teams' $25 an hour to livestream from scenes of murders, fires and car accidents in New York and LA
Citizen, the crime tracking and neighborhood watch app, is paying 'street team' members $25 to broadcast from the scenes of incidents as if they are regular bystanders, it has been revealed.
A posting on the career site JournalismJobs.com, which was first reported by the New York Post, advertises for the roles 'generating live content to give users real-time information on what's going on in their city as it unfolds.'
The job posting does not mention the Citizen app and was posted by casting agency Flyover Entertainment, but a spokeswoman for Citizen confirmed to DailyMail.com that that it was for Citizen street team roles.
'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,' the spokeswoman said in a statement.
'We believe these teams will ultimately help guide our users on how to broadcast in an effective, helpful and safe way. New York City newsrooms use Citizen video in their reporting virtually daily,' she added.
Citizen, the crime tracking and neighborhood watch app, is paying 'street team' members $25 to broadcast from the scenes of incidents as if they are regular bystanders
A posting on the career site JournalismJobs.com advertises for roles as a paid 'street team' member for the Citizen app, a spokeswoman for the company confirmed
While the existence of the paid street teams has been previously reported, the job posting confirms new details about how the teams work and how much they are paid.
'You will need to be very quick on your feet, not only in terms of going live during moments that provide value to its users and support the app's mission, but being able to locate and incorporate interviews on the fly that contribute to the live stream,' the posting reads.
'You are 'on call' for the app on the days you work. On those days you may get dispatched only to 1 event such as 'dog locked in car', or several events ranging from child reported missing, to house fire, to anything else,' the posting notes.
'The app will *never* ask you to go to an actively dangerous location,' the ad continues.
The Citizen app, which is wildly popular in major cities, promises to deliver real-time updates about crime and public safety incidents in the immediate area of users.
But it has faced backlash from some quarters for supposedly 'panicking' users with frequent alerts based on unverified 911 reports and police radio traffic.
The Citizen app, first released in 2016, relies on police scanner traffic and user reports, including user-submitted videos, to map reports of nearby crimes and police responses
The app thrives on user-generated content such as live video from bystanders on the ground, making it a potential competitor for local news stations and sites.
It is now clear that some of that video content is actually being shot by paid workers for Citizen.
One such street team member named Chris, who goes by the Citizen moniker @cgutter_, was identified as a paid worker for Citizen by the Post.
On Thursday, Chris posted from six different incidents, rushing by bike between a bus wreck, reports of shots fired, and other emergencies.
Chris has streamed 1,600 videos that have racked up 1.52 million views, according to his profile.
Though Citizen confirmed to the Post that Chris is a member of its paid street teams, he is not flagged as an employee on the app, and appears to be like any other regular user, albeit a highly active one.
Citizen says it doesn't hide the existence of its paid street teams, but it does not advertise for the roles on its own site, using intermediaries such as Flyover to post ads for the gigs.
The latest controversy comes just months after Citizen faced backlash over a number of incidents in May, when CEO Andrew Frame placed a $30,000 bounty on a homeless man, wrongly accusing him of arson in a Los Angeles wildfire.
Police later released that man for lack of evidence, and arrested and charged a different homeless man, 48-year-old Ramon Rodriguez -- but not before Frame demanded a push notification to Citizen users in Los Angeles with a photo of the wrong suspect, urging them to hunt him down.
Citizen CEO and founder Andrew Frame is under fire for putting a bounty on the wrong man's head in southern California
'first name? What is it?! publish ALL info,' Frame wrote in the Slack chat, according to Vice, which interviewed former employees and obtained the internal records.
'FIND THIS F***,' he told them. 'LETS GET THIS GUY BEFORE MIDNIGHT HES GOING DOWN.'
In the chat room with Frame, one Citizen employee pointed out that the company was violating its own terms of service that prohibit 'posting of specific information that could identify parties involved in an incident' -- but the complaint went ignored, according to Vice.
A Citizen spokesperson told DailyMail.com at the time: 'Citizen’s mission is to make the world a safer place. When a brush fire started in Pacific Palisades earlier this month, our intention was to keep our Los Angeles users safe and informed as evacuations were ordered and homes were destroyed.'
'Officials labeled the fire an act of arson, and unfortunately, an on-the-ground tip about a person of interest from an LAPD Sergeant was used in place of official confirmation from public safety agencies. We deeply regret our mistake and are working to improve our internal processes to prevent this from happening again,' the spokesperson added.
The app pushed the bounty out in an alert to users in Southern California in May, but included a picture of a homeless man , who was later released by the police for lack of evidence
Meanwhile, Citizen also recently backed down from plans it had considered to create a private security force to dispatch to users in distress.
In May, Citizen ended the pilot program in Los Angeles and said it has no plans to launch a similar service elsewhere, according to CBS News.
It came after a Citizen spokeswoman confirmed the pilot program to DailyMail.com, saying that it was testing private security responses with its own employees in Los Angeles, for example if they wanted to be escorted home at late at night.
A mysterious Citizen-branded patrol vehicle had been seen prowling the streets of Los Angeles, with markings linking it to private security firm Los Angeles Professional Security .
'This was a small 30-day test that is now complete,' a Citizen spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch of the program. 'We have no plans to launch our own private security force and no ongoing relationship with LAPS.'