I don’t mind the drone arial views so much - provided they’re not causing a nuisance, a risk to anyone, or intruding on anyone’s privacy. I enjoy watching arial videos / seeing arial photos - and I agree it’s really interesting seeing how things and places change over time. It’s also really interesting seeing things from a different view point - I don’t have a drone or ever fly in a helicopter so I don’t ever get to see that angle.
I do watch auditors occasionally if they come up on social media when I’m scrolling, I like seeing if I recognise local areas so I will watch the ones around the city/towns where i live, see if i recognise anywhere (or nosey inside public buildings I’ve never been in!)
unless its a short clip though, im really unlikely to watch the whole thing. More often than not the auditor is in my opinion embarrassing themself - not the person they’re targeting - and the same repeated argument about the legalities of them filming is pretty boring. Actually many of the things they’re filming is pretty boring - “here is a barrier, there is the security guard, look he keeps looking at me” etc
What I really do not like is the auditors who spend their time effectively harassing people - getting in the way of people trying to do their job, testing people who are trying to do their job, putting cameras right in people’s faces (as in inches away, not just pointed at them), being abusive and/or otherwise hostile, and trying to goad their ‘victim’ into a reaction or into showing their knowledge on something - just for views.
Such examples I have seen (but I can’t remember who any of them are - and some are from a good few years ago) include:-
- auditor acting sketchy in a shopping centre, forcing security/management to approach them and then ask them to leave, thus they could get into an argument over the right to film in a public space vs the shopping centre being private property. I think the shopping centre claimed he wasn’t a customer and therefore had no right to be on the premises. He just refused to leave or see reason. don’t recall how it ended - I probably stopped watching!
- going into a I think it was a council advice centre to make a complaint in a manner as though it’s all the personal fault of the customer services person sitting behind the counter, refusing to listen to advice or to follow the correct complaints procedure, going so far as to accuse the worker of being a criminal because of something to do with his housing (that wasn’t a council house - because he also went on to film the workers at the company his housing was from - I assume it was one of those registered social landlord companies that took over from council housing) and vowing to report them to the police for something housing related, probably giving him an eviction notice, really don’t remember though.
- filming the perimeter and security measures at some sort of industrial estate/company/factory - obviously that’s going to make the company/ workers/ security nervous - ESPECIALLY considering on the odd occasion they will use the forward facing camera or you catch their reflection in a window and they are wearing face coverings / balaclava, masks etc. It’s not necessary and is done only to goad staff/security into coming out and asking them not to video so they can argue they have a right to video etc and effectively attempt to show up the person that engages with them
- having a go at some paramedics for where they’ve parked their ambulance - though frankly if I or a loved one is having a serious medical episode I’d prefer the paramedics got there asap instead of spending time looking for an appropriate space
- filming some paramedics that had a patient in the back of the ambulance - trying to look through the window - really not fair on the member of the public potentially experiencing something personal who knows
- harassing and abusing police officers who are doing their job or from some videos ive seen, the police officers are trying to drive into/out of police stations in their own personal vehicles which I don’t think is fair. Even putting their personal reg plates on the video when they don’t want to speak to them - how is that fair? Holding cameras inches from their faces, getting in the way at an incident, being abusive. That’s not on.
I was scrolling through one of the social media channels recently and came across a video (can’t remember the ‘auditor’ or what social media I was even on because I was just scrolling through reels) but he was being really abusive to a police officer about the police officer’s appearance (not uniform, it was personal comments) and then holding the camera inches from his head and calling him names. The police officer wasn’t taking the bait, and the auditor just seemed to be getting worse, escalating his insults and behaviour. There’s some I’ve seen as well where they are targeting specific police officers, presumably ones that have dealt with them or with allegations they have made. It wasn’t like he was doing an audit of a protest, of the police’s handling of a protest or even trying to question the police officer’s knowledge of the law, he had literally sunk down to personal insults and name calling. It just makes the auditor look like an idiot rather than what they were obviously trying to achieve in making the police officer look like an idiot, demean him, and get a YouTube channel worthy reaction - or as seems to be the case in some I’ve watched, get themselves arrested so they can then claim they were falsely arrested.
and the way some of the auditors call emergency services workers and council workers “public servant” in a derogatory manner, sort of implying the target of their filming is inferior - it’s rude and unnecessary.
Most of the videos I have seen have been them trying to goad police officers though. Maybe I watched a couple and fell into a police auditor algorithm pit!
No objection if they feel things/people/police need ‘auditing’ - like standing from afar maybe at a protest or at a football match to film the police and whether there’s any police brutality, by all means holding the police accountable - or even if there appears to be a large group of police officers standing together in the town centre (are they skiving, are they having a public briefing like those ones the police sometimes put on Facebook when they’ve got a day of action - may be worth checking it out) … anything where something is happening that doesn’t mean they’re invading anyone’s privacy (eg members of public) ….. but absolutely not when they start getting personal, abusive, in the way, interfering with arrests, impacting members of the public etc.
Imagine being at your customer services job that you took because you wanted to be able to help people, and someone comes in being loud, holding a phone in your face, shouting that you’re a criminal for some reason, trying to goad you, disturbing other customers, shouting over you, filming you. Imagine if you’re doing that job and you had escaped domestic violence and moved 100s of miles away from your home town because your abusive stalker ex was on a mission to find you and seriously harm you, and now you’re on YouTube?
Imagine someone makes false allegations against you so you get arrested and the auditor decides your arrest needs videoing (for audit purposes) and the police abusing whilst they’re doing it. Now anyone on YouTube can see that you were arrested .. despite the allegation then being proven to be false and the accuser dealt with.
imagine being a victim of a really serious traumatic crime and you’re trying to talk to a police officer on the street because you’ve just run there - maybe having escaped from being a victim of something really traumatic - you’re crying and trying to tell the police officer what happened so they can apprehend the person that did it, but an auditor is putting a camera in the officers face and accusing them of making you upset … saying they are going to audit the officer and make sure they don’t do anything wrong.
or - imagine being hit by a car or having a medical episode, so the paramedics attend and they cut off your clothing. Maybe you’re female and need urgent CPR and therefore they use the defib machine - so they cut off your top and bra in order to save your life. Or you’re male and bleeding heavily from somewhere around your groin, so they have to cut off your trousers and your underwear to examine the bleed and do whatever is necessary to prevent you bleeding to death before they get you to hospital.
Those auditors - and in particular the ones that do it JUST to get a reaction and wind up the subject/s of their videos - are very wrong. It’s not in the public’s interest at all - in fact they’re wasting public money by wasting the time of the person they’re filming, especially if it’s someone who works for local government, the police, other emergency services, or perhaps a public money funded company.
perhaps the auditors need auditing for their behaviour!