We’ve all seen the power of open source information to solve a mystery. Crowdsourced investigations like George Webb does are often faster than traditional news in getting to the latest stories and gathering evidence. Even the news relies combs through social media for its sources — but only when the source fits their agenda.

What about everything that the news doesn’t show you? Or that the social media feeds aren’t currently covering? It’s time the crowd has the ability to see for itself, to self-coordinate and become its own reporters.

Even if you’re in lockdown, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to explore what’s happening in another city by linking up with someone willing to livestream exactly what you want to see, without having to wait for the news media gatekeepers to serve it up for you at their leisure.

I'm building a platform to allow curious citizens to crowdfund bounties anywhere on a map, that other users can capture by starting a public livestream there. Users who are near enough to collect these bounties get paid, kind of like uber, but for livestreaming. Streamers will earn tips for realtime requests during streaming too. And we are going to try to maximize the earnings you can make with the video you collect.

This isn’t just a tool to build a utility to facilitate public collaborative research, we think this has real potential to help lots of underemployed people make income on the side.

Currently, we are just about to launch our alpha version, but we need some feedback from people willing to try it and give feedback.

In particular, I’m looking for people who A) want to help disrupt the fake news media machine, B) people who are currently in the gig economy, or C) people who have been financially displaced by covid and looking to make money by using their cell phone.

If this sounds like you, or if you are simply interesting in making money by catching video bounties near you, let’s talk.

To join our alpha group, you can drop your email (burner is recommended - we don't want your PII!) here: www.vidi.world