iPhone: this app pays its users $ 250 / day to film crimes and crime scenes

An iPhone app recruits employees to film live events in its neighborhood. Whether it is a traffic accident, fire or malicious acts. This American app, called Citizen, pays $ 200 to $ 250 per day. This app is the subject of much controversy in the United States.

Imagine a scene. You walk around your neighborhood. Suddenly, a driver loses control of his vehicle and enters a tree. You are present at the time of the accident. You take out your cell phone. And you film the scene before you share it on social media. Chance is that you are in the right place at the right time. A bit like the person who saw a Tesla Model S crash into his neighbor’s house in the middle of the night.

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Broadcasting these events is the application’s business Citizen, available only on iPhone. It alerts its users to accidents and misdeeds taking place in the neighborhood. And it can also make witness calls to ask a user to go to a place where an alert has been given to share a video.

Citizen recruits its users to film neighborhood misdeeds

However, relying on chance and the goodwill of users does not allow us to be exhaustive. Citizen therefore began to recruit employees. Several ads were posted on job search sites, especially intended for journalists, as reported by the American daily New York Post, which was able to speak with a spokesperson for the application.

The mission: to patrol an area and film all the events that take place there. See even go ask questions to the police if they are there and collect additional information. Salary : 25 dollars an hour, with 8 or 10 hour patrols. That is $ 200 to $ 250 per day.

The ad is not exclusively reserved for journalists. It is surprisingly not attached to Citizen, but to a recruitment firm mandated to broadcast the ad. It is now targeting the citizens of Los Angeles and New York. Several people have already been recruited to feed the information feed of the application.

An application accused of encouraging citizens to substitute for justice

Citizen, first launched on the App Store under the name Vigilant (before being deleted by Apple, then coming back under another name), is a very controversial application in the United States, because it is accused of encouraging citizens to take the place of justice (hence its original name ). She is behind the detention of a person suspected of having started fires in California. Citizen then promised its users a bonus of $ 30,000 for anyone who disseminated information leading to the arrest of a suspect. It turns out he was innocent, because the information had not been properly verified.

Source: New York Post