Questioning the usefulness and future of Citizen
Does the unofficial social network for protests advance transparency, rubbernecking or divisiveness?
The tragic killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police has enraged the world in the past weeks. Protests for the #BlackLivesMatter movement and anti-police brutality have been demonstrated from the US, Japan to New Zealand. In a country with mounting tensions between its citizens and police officers, more people are turning to apps as their means of obtaining trustworthy news and updates about their surroundings. Citizen, a community safety app that tracks and notifies users of 911 police alerts, was downloaded roughly 440,000 times on smartphones in the last week according to Sensor Tower. The first week of June also saw Citizen being bumped to the 4th most downloaded iOS app across all categories, according to App Annie. Still, I can’t help but wonder if relying on a third-party app originally created under the alias “Vigilante” is the true answer during volatile times like these.
Launched in 2017, Citizen now has over 3 million users across 15 cities in the United States. Big-name investors like Sequoia Capital, 8VC and Slow Ventures have bought into Citizen’s narrative of fostering transparency between civilians and law enforcement. Describing itself as a “force for good,” Citizen CEO Andrew Frame states that the app’s core mission is to drive mutual accountability. Citizen unlocks the access to all 911 alerts and notifies users in the area of all types of emergencies. Frame believes that it is not solely the first responder’s right to be made aware, but that justice goes two ways.
For those outside of the US where the app has yet to be available, the greatest selling point is that the information is presented live and updated in real-time based on geographical location. Users are able to see how emergencies are being resolved and handled. Ever since the George Floyd incident, people have increasingly tuned into Citizen for updates on protests or dangerous looting activities. Citizen is extremely helpful for eliminating someone’s anxiety about their surrounding environments, or to simply enhance their overall situation awareness.
Besides the protests, Citizen is also widely used for the high-profile COVID-19 pandemic. As of May 2020, Citizen shares coronavirus updates in its app from local authorities to keep people informed. Its contract tracing feature, SafeTrace, is designed to keep users safe by alerting users if they were exposed to someone who has tested positive. Citizen said it aims to be in 30 cities by the end of 2020.
Citizen, along with a handful of other products, operate as a fear-based social media. Apps like Nextdoor and Amazon Ring’s Neighbors all allow users to view and commentate on real-time crime near them. Facebook’s Safety Check feature, which many of my friends use during events such as natural disasters or mass shootings, also focuses on encouraging people to report their safety and current conditions. Where Citizen differs from these competitors, is primarily in two ways. Firstly is its relationship with local authorities. This allows the app to report immediate and verified intel straight to users, on issues such as the coronavirus or curfew. Nevertheless, the trust in authorities from the public is waning. Police scanner apps are experiencing an uptick in installs as citizens do not believe what officers share to the public, and prefer to manually listen in. Secondly, Citizen is labelling itself as a news-based app, as opposed to a social app. Although users can comment and interact on Citizen, its primary spotlight still shines on the information itself. Whether a live video or status update, the first and chief priority is to notify people regarding the news, then to subsequently encourage conversation. Hence, Citizen can be compared to Twitter in this sense.
Since June 1st, it was observed that Twitter was being downloaded more than Facebook and Instagram, which is a case that is out of the ordinary. Twitter for most, myself included, is heavily used for real time news and hyper-local updates. The majority of local authorities such as the New York Police Department (@NYPDNews) use Twitter to provide their own updates to the community. Due to this, Twitter is often referenced as a significant source for reporters and media. As of now, we don’t see the same trust on accuracy for Citizen. Apart from local news, Twitter users can also stay informed on global situations that are affecting their state or country at large.
Obviously, there are a handful of concerns about the Citizen app that stoke people’s fears, beyond the content itself. This March, Citizen relaunched a controversial feature that permits all users to report crimes and incidents on their own by live streaming video. User-generated content on a safety app that’s attempting to gain utmost community trust must be addressed with exceptional care. If mishandled, Citizen could set the stage for greater injustice towards minorities, government surveillance, and misinformation with malintent.
In addition, Citizen has access to a frightening amount of data. Experts have expressed their concerns with Citizen’s location data collection methods, where all users must give the app permission to their GPS even when they are not actively using the service. Of course, this would save lives in the case of receiving notifications during emergencies - but also raises critical questions about the government’s interest in such data, and the potential severe consequence for a lack of oversight.
One of the companies I mentioned, Amazon’s Ring, currently partners with over 400 police departments. Law enforcements also wield the creepy ability to directly request Ring camera footage from any individual’s home.
Data on Citizen can be easily traced to a unique device identifier - revealing personal information like a user’s name, email address, and phone number (which is required for registration). Moreover, Citizen is tight-lipped about exactly how long it stores these user data. The company says it is obligated to turn over users’ data to law enforcement in response to valid subpoenas, court orders, or search warrants. But in 2019, the Washington Post reported that Citizen had been forwarding personally identifying information (emails, phone numbers etc.) to tracking tech startup Amplitude, directly violating user trust and privacy policy. This makes the boost Citizen is getting as a result of the protests quite ironic, considering that people are growing more cautious about surveillance and likely installing the app for the sake of gaining protecting, not risking losing their privacy. It becomes terrifying to imagine the sheer volume of user information - that Citizen has built a catalog of, improperly harvested, leaked or maliciously accessed.
Another compelling factor that questions Citizen’s promise of keeping data independent is the fact that the app has yet to monetize. Furthermore, the company offers vague plans regarding how it will do so in the future. Until then, there remains the possibility that Citizen may follow a tried-and-true path. Florian Schaub, a University of Michigan professor on digital privacy shares that “when companies are looking for monetization opportunities, they increasingly look toward the data they are collecting about customers.”
Is Citizen ready for the spotlight?
Given the sudden development of events that are location-specific and safety-sensitive, Citizen has experienced a pronounced surge in traffic and attention. Along with this, almost certainly, will come criticism. Take Zoom, the video conference software that gained 159 million monthly active users within the short span of 2 months - upping its user base by an astronomical 1135%. Zoom undoubtedly benefitted from the requirement for companies to work remotely, but faced a profusion of scrutiny over its security issues. It has, as a consequence, lost numerous education and government-sector paying customers, and face ongoing threats from competitors with a noteworthy reputation for security and encryption. When Citizen comes underneath the microscope of the market and critics, will it be able to weather the storm? For a 3-year old startup out of the Big Apple, has it prepared itself for the fame and accompanying scrutiny?
There was originally a #BLM protest scheduled in Toronto, Canada on Saturday June 6th. As I was researching about what safety gears I would need to bring, the protest was abruptly cancelled. For hours, my friends and I had no idea the reason behind this. We scoured different social media platforms and organization’s accounts. It was from an Instagram story of a friend’s, which shared a post of their friend’s, which was a photo of a tweet from Twitter, that we found out why. From there, we all manually shared the blurry screenshot of the cancellation through our stories, tweets and text messages - to ensure that it reached everyone. The reason behind the cancellation was actually a riot group threatening to leverage the peaceful protest as an opportunity to loot and destroy property. As it put people’s safety on the line, I genuinely wish we had a Citizen-esque app in Canada where this type of vital information could be quickly shared. Currently, I have to resort to manual and ineffective measures that produce limited reach and is bounded to the geography of people in my network. Not to mention, everyone uses different social media platforms for different means, thus there is no guarantee that the information I’m sharing is even reaching the right ears. With Citizen, at least, I know that everyone is checking the app for the same purpose of actively seeking safety tips.
Having this technology ready for people to access and use is fantastic during times like these. For example, nobody could have predicted nor prepared ahead of time for the spread of the coronavirus. Instead of creating an app as a reaction, like Apple and Google did for COVID tracing, Citizen did not need any waiting time. There is actual value, even if you are not sharing or experiencing events live, to just use the app as a way to keep informed and inspired (by the passion of protestors). Not only does Citizen hand power to every individual to report crimes of injustice, but there are many success stories of the app playing a crucial role in saving a human life.
There is evidently a need for apps like Citizen during volatile times. The political unrest happening in Hong Kong triggered the development of its own versions of protest and safety apps. Citizen is tremendously demanded in cities where there is a consistent erosion and collapse of trust between the public and its authorities. Whether or not Citizen can truly fulfill its claim to rebuild that trust after these times, or only deteriorate it further, we will have to wait and see.
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