There is a growing backlash against influencers filming strangers in public without their knowledge for videos on social media. A recent report by Vo

Is It Time to Stop Filming Strangers in Public?

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Style Pass

2024-06-05 10:30:03

There is a growing backlash against influencers filming strangers in public without their knowledge for videos on social media.

A recent report by Vox has explored the debate around whether it is ever okay for influencers to film strangers in public and why it makes up so much of the most popular content on social media.

According to Vox, on social media, filming strangers in public without their knowledge has become “a controversial cottage industry” and some of the most-viewed content on these online platforms essentially involve “nonconsensual voyeurism.”

Instagram has fuelled the ascent of wildly popular voyeuristic accounts like Influencers in the Wild which features stealthily-captured videos of content creators going to extreme lengths to capture the perfect shot — and Subway Creatures which posts photos of passengers on the New York Subway.

Meanwhile, content creators on TikTok and YouTube have used unsuspecting strangers as “unwilling background actors” to gain millions of views and lucrative brand deals — from “random acts of kindness” videos to largely female influencers secretly filming men’s reactions to them in the gym.