The owner of a bakery in Tasmania has asked customers not to record his staff’s faces after it became popular with tourists posting on social media.
A firm yet polite sign at Pigeon Whole Bakers in Hobart, Tasmania says the following: “We love you sharing your enthusiasm for Pigeon Whole Bakers on socials, but to protect the privacy of staff, please don’t include their faces when taking photos or videos.”
It comes after staff have grown frustrated at influencers, food bloggers and even every day social media users who feel entitled to record them without their consent.
“You’re working away, bagging pastries, passing someone their coffee and you look up and they’re filming the interaction,” Co-manager Tori Burnie told ABC Radio Hobart.
“That’s how you know — you look up and the camera is in your face.”
The Insta-famous bakery’s owner, Jay Patey, understands his workers frustration — there’s no way to know for sure what people are going to do with the footage they take in the bakery, and that can be concerning.
He said he asks customers if he can record them before filming marketing content at the bakery, and he expects the same consideration back.
After all, wouldn’t it be weird or uncomfortable if he went up to people’s tables and started recording them mid-meal for his business’ Instagram?
The store’s new policy renews the never-ending debate around privacy in public spaces — namely, are we entitled to it? And what are people’s responsibilities in these spaces?
These questions have been around for some time, but the trend of filming strangers for “random acts of kindness” videos on TikTok — where people went viral for videos they didn’t even know they were in — really brought them into the limelight.
Some people slammed the videos for turning strangers into sob stories without their consent. But other times, cheaters have been caught being unfaithful in their relationships because they were unknowingly recorded in the wrong place.
In an increasingly digital age that has brought smart phones and computers into our homes, the boundaries of the public and private sphere are blurring. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, it seems it’s hard to decide.
However, it shouldn’t be controversial to require consent to film someone’s face in public — especially when they’re minding their own business and trying to get through their day.
Unless you’re filming an interaction for legal reasons, like if someone is acting inappropriately and you need evidence, there’s no reason not to be considerate — and anyway, videos at a bakery should be less about the staff and more about the food.
Normalise not broadcasting strangers’ faces into the void that is the digital realm without permission. The internet is forever — and we should be able to choose which parts of ourselves end up on it.
