Sarah Harte: It's not just a Tiktok moment. It's about consent and the right to dignity

An influencer brands unsolicited and unpermitted attention as 'kindness' — and, all the while, big tech is making money from it

Harrison Pawluk orchestrated a scenario where he handed flowers to a then unwitting woman, Maree. All the while, she was being filmed for the 22-year-old social media influencer's Tiktok stream.

You probably know that the erosion of our civil liberties is rooted in Silicon Valley and that social media networks from Facebook to TikTok have become a treasure trove for intelligence operatives. To paraphrase Lauren, the surly schoolgirl character from the Catherine Tate show, “are you bovvered?”  

Last week, a 22-year-old social media creator was forced to apologise to an older woman for gifting her flowers in a ‘random act of kindness’ and uploading a video of the gesture to Tiktok without her consent where it went viral and has now been viewed 64m times.