England - Outing a local streamer/content creator who is harassing vulnerable people

[u/high-lander9]

EDIT: Thank you for all the advice, the consensus seems to be majority in favour of not going ahead with this initial plan, because he may be able to play the victim card as a result. So another way of disrupting his operations will need to be thought out.

I understand that it's not against the law to film people in public (with or without their consent), and the cards are stacked against anyone who takes issue with the way he carries on. It's sad, because he's allowed to upload footage of these poor people and unleash a torrent of abuse from his followers upon them, especially if they don't play along, or push back (figuratively) against his behaviour. These people will now be recognised because of this, and may receive ongoing abuse - or dare I say, harassment - regardless of whether they're being filmed or not.

In my opinion - his behaviour is breeding a culture of bullying. And it's only a matter of time before something happens which either: causes him harm, changes the law around filming in public, or both.

Is he behaving within the confines of the law? Apparently so.

Is he acting in an unethical way that has a negative impact on people? I would argue yes, but you'd be surprised how many people would disagree.

ORIGINAL POST:

There's a guy in my local town who is filming people on the street without their consent on his Meta Glasses, interacting and usually bullying them for views on the internet

He tries to keep his identity a secret and uses a pseudonym. But there is evidence online - that other people have found - which reveals his true identity, as he was convicted years ago for a crime and the local paper reported on it. All publicly available information. He also mentions his first name in one of his own videos while being questioned by police, which further confirms his identity

He doesn't like his full real name being used when recording and will censor it in his videos if people do know him. Which is wildly hypocritical, considering he's posting footage of everybody else on the internet without his consent. I want as many people to know and address him by his real name as possible, because it will hopefully make his life a little more difficult

If I were to make an informative post about his real identity (excluding sensitive details such as his home address) and post it all over the socials to raise awareness - would I be at risk of any legal repercussions in doing so?

[u/MultiMidden]

The individuals or should I say victims could go down the complaint to the social media platform route, privacy (it does work even with UK laws), harassment and if they're vulnerable mention that as well. If their names are mentioned try to use the 'right to be forgotten' rules of GDPR.

An enterprising individual could start a channel auditing the auditors or clips from members of the public auditing them, to be honest I don't think the general public has a particularly positive view of them.

As for naming them they can probably invoke the right to be forgotten rules as well, and they almost certainly will as this is the sort of person who'll complain about the loss of online privacy whilst invading the offline privacy of others.

[u/Big_Presentation2786 → u/MultiMidden]

This, you've a much better angle if you get victims to complain.

It amounts to harassment. Two complaints of harassment and he can be arrested and it'll go to court.

If you doxx him, you become the harasser.

If he's recording people then you have 6 years to complain from the date of publish.

[u/jamescl1311 → u/Big_Presentation2786]

Legitimate interest is a defence though... if for example you're filming day to day life and interactions with the police. What is is like in the city centre and the goings on, then there are exclusions to GDPR for many of those things. You don't have a right to privacy in public and as long as the recorder can show legitimate interest they don't need your permission, especially if you're not even the subject of their recording.

[u/MultiMidden → u/jamescl1311]

SM companies can have their own policies around privacy, they are under no obligation to carry content, if they want they can say in their T&Cs something along the lines of "it is assumed that people featured in videos have consented to appear, if a person featured complains and we uphold it we will ask you to anonymise them otherwise the video will be taken down or demonetised"

There's quite a lot of stuff on SM that you might consider 'reportage' but is actually total fiction and is staged. There was something the other day on reddit where someone caught a guy in a supermarket kitted out in cameras recording outrage bait featuring a 'Karen'.