On Saturday, the Dallas Police Department posted a tweet telling people to send them videos from ongoing protests against police brutality via the iWatch Dallas app.
“If you have a video of illegal activity from the protests and are trying to share it with @DallasPD, you can download it to our iWatch Dallas app,” they wrote. “You can remain anonymous.”
Instead, Twitter users are flooding the official snitching app with unrelated videos, memes, K-pop fancams, and even footage of the police themselves.
If you have video of illegal activity from the protests and are trying to share it with @DallasPD, you can download it to our iWatch Dallas app. You can remain anonymous. @ChiefHallDPD @CityOfDallas
— Dallas Police Dept (@DallasPD) May 31, 2020
The U.S. is currently embroiled in widespread protests against police brutality and racism, sparked by the recent death of 46-year-old George Floyd. Floyd died on May 25 in Minneapolis, Minnesota after police handcuffed him and knelt on his neck for several minutes. Video footage of the incident shows police officer Derek Chauvin continued to pin Floyd to the ground despite his repeated cries that he couldn’t breathe, and refused to relent even after Floyd became unresponsive.
Floyd was just the latest of countless black people who have been needlessly victimised or died at the hands of police, prompting thousands to take to the streets in protest. However, rather than deescalating the situation, law enforcement have largely responded with increasing violence.
Numerous viral videos have captured police officers assaulting visibly peaceful civilians at these protests, as well as indiscriminately targeting journalists and bystanders without provocation. Not even people standing quietly on their own front porch are safe.
Twitter users have therefore responded to Dallas PD’s request for information by spamming the iWatch Dallas app with unrelated videos and encouraging others to do the same. The intent is that any information which could identify protesters will be buried by the flood.
Some people have been submitting media such as SpongeBob SquarePants memes and the Bee Movie script to the Dallas police’s app. Others have sent footage of police violence. However, by far the largest, most coordinated effort appears to have come from K-pop fans, who have no shortage of videos to spam the police with.
guys download the app and fucking FLOOD that shit with fancams make it SO HARD for them to find anything besides our faves dancing https://t.co/zqjVHLWnZG
— allie 📌 #BLM, ACAB (@YGSHlT) May 31, 2020
pigs are using this app to have people send in videos so they can identify those in protests. if we can swarm these pages, they won’t be able to find anything on anyone. how about we put our fancamming into good use and upload so many fancams it floods the app? pic.twitter.com/760nGHwmHZ
— lee hoseok knows acab 🐰 (@leehsk93) May 31, 2020
K-pop fans regularly post clips of their favorite artists on Twitter, even in response to completely unrelated tweets. However, many fans have recently stopped tweeting so zealously about their favorite groups, hoping to keep #BlackLivesMatter and related phrases trending instead. Now they’re using their collections of fancams to try to protect protesters and further help the cause.
It appears to be working, too. Dallas PD announced iWatch Dallas was temporarily down just one day after directing people to use the app, citing “technical difficulties”. Exactly what said difficulties were remains unclear, though many Twitter users have attributed it to K-pop fans’ coordinated spamming efforts. The Dallas Police Department’s website was also down at time of writing due to an overwhelmed server.
Mashable has contacted the Dallas Police Department for comment.
not Kpop stans having the Dallas police department app crash by spamming it with fancams lmfaooo
— HOOD VOGUE is tired of poverty (@itskeyon) June 1, 2020
If the police honestly expected this would end any other way then they’re even more out of touch than we thought.