Originally published at: Citizen app told locals to "hunt" down a man for starting a California fire – but had the wrong guy | Boing Boing
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Visionary tech engineers: we can harness the power of the masses to solve humanity’s greatest problems!!!
Psychopathic rednecks: CROWD-SOURCED BOUNTY HUNTER APP!!!
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Angry mobs have no collective intelligence. People often end up getting killed when vigilante justice takes over. Not good. Nope, not good at all.
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I hear this guy is responsible for inciting a dangerous mob, someone should set up a bounty to capture him:
(That’s the CEO of Citizen, btw.)
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I got on the Citizen app for a minute to see what all the fuss was about. It seemed like a bunch of hyper-vigilant, fear-ridden, close-minded people who thought every loud noise was a gunshot and never cared about the fact that every single “gunshot” they reported was never followed up on leaving everyone on the app to think the entire city was being shot up constantly when it was likely cars backfiring and fireworks. In other words, useless app for useless people.
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reboing
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Normally, successful apps find an unfulfilled need and fulfill it successfully. I am pretty sure the niche for ‘hunting down and putting innocent people in jail’ is already filled by the entire fucking justice system of the United States…
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The app’s original name was VIGILANTE.
Let that sink in a bit. 
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Your reckless app is going to get somebody killed, you obtuse coprophagic jackasses.
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I foresee viable lawsuits in someone’s future…
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The parallels between Vigilante CEO Andrew Frame and Heath Ledger’s Joker are hard to ignore, but his users are more like the inept untrained Batman copycats.
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The wisdom of the crowd, versus the madness of the crowd.
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How long until the app makers are sued into nonexistence?
That’s the night when the lights went out in Pacific Palisades.
A college with a mostly white student pop. in a mostly Black city used to send text alerts to the college community whenever there was a crime on or near campus. Often the suspect was identified only as “a Black male.” My daughter’s friend, who happened to be a student and a Black male, had a sit-down with the campus police chief to explain why this kind of text was a problem. The chief stopped sending out such vague descriptions.
Where’s the multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuit? I imagine there are other sue-able offenses related to inciting a lynch mob.
Isn’t this the plot of don’t-let-this-happen movies like The Circle? It’s like politicians who use 1984 as a muse.
