Can you ever expect privacy in public? Coldplay kiss camera saga tells us a lot about the answer
When the KissCam at a Coldplay concert last week landed on a couple who suspiciously escaped their embrace and tried (but failed) to duck out of the spotlight, the internet immediately got to work. Online sleuths quickly rushed to identify who was on camera, uncovering an apparent romantic affair between a tech company’s CEO and its head of human resources. Beyond the fallout of this specific incident, experts point more broadly to the state of “social media surveillance” today. It’s increasingly common for moments that may have been intended to be private, or at least reserved to a physical venue, to make their way online — and often lead to an internet search to find the people involved. That’s eroded what privacy expectations we can have in today’s modern world.