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What Next TBD: The App That Sparked a Manhunt

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

Society & Culture, Business, News

3.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Two weeks ago, as wildfires burned north of Los Angeles, the crime app Citizen offered $30,000 for information that would lead to the arrest of a suspected arsonist. They had the wrong guy. Why is Citizen offering bounties in the first place? And what does this bounty debacle say about the app’s aspirations for the future? Guest: Joseph Cox, reporter at Motherboard Host Henry Grabar Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

A quick warning before we get started.

0:01.8

This episode contains some adult language.

0:04.4

If you're listening with kids, you might want to skip this one.

0:11.0

Hey, Amy, how you doing?

0:12.8

I'm good. How are you?

0:14.4

I'm good.

0:15.9

Thanks for taking a minute to...

0:18.0

Last year, I was renting a room in Chicago.

0:21.0

My landlord, whose voice you just heard, was Amy.

0:24.3

The apartment we lived in was on this beautiful tree line street.

0:28.0

It's just so peaceful and calm and quiet and full of beautiful trees and families.

0:33.0

And you can sleep with the windows open.

0:36.0

It's a very beautiful community.

0:39.0

But since I arrived there, Amy's attitude towards this area has changed a little bit.

0:45.0

Because of an app she had downloaded, called Citizen,

0:48.0

it fed her every detail of what was going wrong in the neighborhood.

0:52.0

It turned out like one block from my front door.

0:56.0

People are being robbed.

0:58.0

People are being attacked.

1:00.0

Women are being assaulted.

1:02.0

And there were places I would walk to that I just stopped walking to.

1:08.0

Like walking to the lake alone.

...

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