A Whisper user used the anonymous social app to give live updates on his standoff with police in Grand Prairie, Texas. He is now in custody.
A Dallas NBC affiliate is reporting on the standoff, which took place along near the intersection of Pioneer Parkway and Great Southwest Parkway. Reports indicate the standoff started as a traffic stop around 1pm local time. (This is the exact location on Google Maps.)
Whisper’s team noticed the posts and made contact with the man involved in the standoff. Whisper employee Josh Chavers exchanged a series of direct messages through the social app. Whisper editor Neetzan Zimmerman gave our sister site Gawker copies of his DMs with the man in question:
“We have notified the authorities per our policy on users posting about potentially unlawful activity, and we also reached out to the individual, who has been very forthcoming about speaking with us,” Zimmerman told Gizmodo as the standoff came to an end.
This is an impressive response on Whisper’s end. If this would have happened on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, it’s highly unlikely an employee would have directed contacted the poster and engaged them in conversation, since the big social networks heavily rely on users’ self-policing. In Whisper’s case, the posts drew attention so quickly because of a moderator. “It was originally flagged by one of the editorial content curators and then investigated by our news unit,” Zimmerman told Gizmodo.