Imagine yourself in Times Square, New York. You're on a trip with your sister. Flashing billboards, cart vendors, and street performers seek your attention. A member of a nearby dance troupe breaks formation to approach you, touching your shoulder and requesting a high five. Feeling uncomfortable, you refuse, rubbing your shoulder. Then, you start to cry.
You don’t know it at this moment, but you're being recorded. Someone has their phone out, capturing the whole interaction without saying a word. This stranger then uploads it to TikTok, where it goes viral with over 400,000 views before it's taken down. You’re mocked mercilessly in the comments for your reaction. Some accuse you of being racist: you are white, and the person who asked for the high five is Black. On TikTok, you are no longer you. Instead, you’ve become a search term: "girl crying in Times Square."
With the rise of social media and smartphones, videos of people’s real-time reactions to situations in public places have become synonymous with online platforms; easily shared and normalised as viral content. Videos like the aforementioned Times Square clip trend at speed on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and X (formerly known as Twitter), prompting not only likes and views, but harassment, discourse, and invasive sleuthing of the videos' often unaware subjects, regardless of the original poster's intent.
"On TikTok, you are no longer you. Instead, you’ve become a search term: 'girl crying in Times Square.'"
Dealing with humiliating and often devastating consequences after being filmed in public without your consent raises questions about the ethics of these types of posts. Where do we draw the line between public interest and public shaming? And when did we become so desensitised to videos of strangers being filmed in public without their consent?
Facing harassment and vigorous online abuse, the sister of "girl crying in Times Square" decided to post a two-part response to the video on TikTok, explaining her sister is autistic and that their intense reaction to the stranger’s touch was due to contamination OCD. She also confirmed that they had no idea they were being filmed at the time. This video has 4.5 million views to date.
As we’ve progressed towards a more instantly reactive world, with a constant need to post and share every moment of our lives made easier with smartphones and social apps, there is a reflex to record each other in moments like these. And the need to share those recordings for likes and engagement often outpaces concerns about consent and privacy.
Basically, strangers should not be filmed without their consent.
According to clinical psychologist and public policy lawyer Dr. Lisa Strohman, strangers who are being filmed in public have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and filming them without their consent can infringe upon their right to control their own image. Basically, strangers should not be filmed without their consent. According to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act of 1998 — an international human rights treaty — everybody has a right to respect for their private and family life, their home and their correspondence.
There are, of course, exceptions to this rule of thumb. According to the EFF, if you’re filming law enforcement, it is well within your rights to do so and may even be considered a safety tool in the face of police brutality. The role of bystander videos was instrumental in prosecuting the murder of George Floyd. Darnella Frazier’s video of Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost 10 minutes was a vital piece of evidence in the prosecution's case, as well as her personal testimony, leading to Chauvin being charged with Floyd's murder and sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.
While this general rule that you are well within your rights to record law enforcement applies globally, the EFF has a very handy guide for what to do in such a situation in America. According to the EFF, using our phones to record on-duty police officers is a very powerful way to expose police misconduct. "You have a First Amendment right to record the police. Federal courts and the Justice Department have recognized the right of individuals to record the police. Although the Supreme Court has not squarely ruled on the issue, there is a long line of First Amendment case law from the high court that supports the right to record the police," says the EFF. "The First Circuit has held that ‘citizen’s right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment,'" they add.
Content creators, particularly those who monetize their videos of strangers, have a history of invoking these nuances in order to justify their behaviour as purportedly serving the public good. Around 2014 to 2016, when ‘prank’ content was extremely popular on YouTube, creators would justify reprehensible behaviour in viral content by saying they were creating a "social experiment." Meanwhile, TikTok has spawned a mini-generation of #kindness influencers who film themselves performing "random acts of kindness" to strangers, regardless of whether they consent to being filmed. According to Statista, entertainment is the most popular category on the app worldwide, with #pranks amassing over 79 billion views.
When Australian TikTok creator Harrison Pawluk filmed himself spontaneously handing a bouquet of flowers to a woman named Maree, who was sitting alone at a table in a Melbourne shopping centre, it seemed like a perfectly normal random act of kindness. But after the video clocked up over 50 million views, Maree told ABC Radio Melbourne that she felt incredibly dehumanised by the video.
"He interrupted my quiet time, filmed and uploaded a video without my consent, turning it into something it wasn’t…I feel he is making quite a lot of money through it."
"He interrupted my quiet time, filmed and uploaded a video without my consent, turning it into something it wasn’t…I feel he is making quite a lot of money through it," she said in an interview. Maree said she was never given the opportunity to decide if she even wanted to accept the flowers, adding she later felt "like clickbait" for how commenters described her as a "heartbreaking tale."
Pawluk eventually apologised amid all the backlash, but also doubled down and said that he will continue performing these "acts of kindness". The problem here is that when Harrison filmed Maree for a social experiment without her knowledge but in view of the internet, he disregarded her right to personal privacy, even in public, explains psychologist Lauren Cook.
Another similar example of this was when someone filmed an elderly woman walking out of her screening of Barbie on her own. All the comments under that TikTok focused on how sad it is that this woman has had to go watch this film on her own. But, it's not possible to know for sure that she was on her own. Secondly, there's nothing sad about doing solo activities. And thirdly, filming this completely takes away her autonomy and privacy, making her subject to internet fodder and scrutiny without her knowledge or consent, much like the case of Maree.
"When we are filming people to 'test out' their reactions, whether it's to prank them or witness a social experiment, we are disrespecting body autonomy and safety in the world,"says Cook. Consent should be required before filming a stranger minding their own business. "When this is lacking, we're seeing folks become increasingly on edge."
