Watch: New Documentary Tells Inside Story of Vigilante App Citizen

“If your app protects the world, you know, and you hurt one person, maybe it’s not the biggest deal.”

That’s what one person who worked at crime-fighting app Citizen says in a new documentary produced by VICE News. Drawing on interviews with people from the company, users, and a victim, “Vigilante, Inc.” shows an app desperate for growth, even at the cost of putting some peoples’ lives at risk.

The documentary is based on Motherboard’s May 2021 article 'FIND THIS FUCK:' Inside Citizen’s Dangerous Effort to Cash In On Vigilantism. That article used internal documents, leaked Slack chats, and interviews with sources to detail how Citizen’s CEO Andrew Frame decided to put a $30,000 bounty on information that would lead to the capture of an arsonist who started a fire in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood.

Citizen ran pseudo-news channel coverage of the incident, with hosts asking viewers for information, and broadcasting the image of a specific person of interest. Hosts encouraged viewers to go out and find this person, saying they were no longer in search mode, but capture mode.

Except, it was the wrong guy. And in Vigilante, Inc., that target speaks for the first time.

You can watch the trailer for Vigilante, Inc. below, and watch the whole documentary for free on Tubi now, here.