The Citizen crime app hasn’t made me safer – just more scared | Emma Brockes
by Emma Brockes from Technology | The Guardian on (#4XG6Y)
It claims to help New Yorkers 'stay safe and informed'. But its constant updates play on our worst rubbernecking instincts
On the second day of the new year, I awoke to the news that a man had been assaulted on 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue, and there had been a fist fight on the east side of Central Park. The previous day, the morning update featured an overnight fight at a Burger King in Hell's Kitchen, possibly involving an ice pick, and an assault involving a knife 10 blocks south of my apartment. In both cases the news, which was reported to some 4,000 people in the vicinity with the Citizen app on their phones, was prefaced with demands from the app to turn on push notifications and the entreaty, "Keep your loved ones safe with urgent crime and safety alerts near them in New York."
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