Nextdoor, the neighborhood-based social media app, has long seen its communities become obsessed with crime and the real and imagined threat thereof. Ring, the controversial Amazon-owned internet-connected doorbell company, lets users upload videos recorded by their devices to a neighborhood feed, which is supplemented by Citizen-style crime reports. What Citizen says it offers to users is awareness and safety: “Citizen is empowering everyday people to participate in their own safety,” said a spokesman for the company in a statement. Citizen asks its users for full access to their phones’ location data, which is a potentially lucrative resource on its own. That means that in pockets around Los Angeles, Citizen’s operators can’t listen in, and semiprivate, functional emergency communication remains just that, away from the gaze of the anxious public.

Source: New York Times March 17, 2019 09:00 UTC