A few days ago, during a Coldplay concert, the camera paused on a couple in the crowd. Classic “kiss cam” moment. They looked embarrassed, the audience reacted with a mix of laughter and gasps, Chris Martin cracked a joke, and social media did the rest. Within hours, the man was identified as the CEO of a well-known software company. The woman? The recently hired HR manager. Shortly after, both were suspended from their roles. The man deleted his LinkedIn profile. His wife – I forgot to mention, both were married, making this a textbook case of “cheating night” – erased her Facebook account. What could have been an awkward but fleeting moment turned into a global spectacle, with consequences neither of them could have foreseen.
As a lawyer, my first thought was rather technical. When you purchase a ticket, and later, when you enter in the arena, there are a bunch of conditions you accept. Among them (I am cutting out a bit of legalese): “you may be filmed or recorded”. That might be enough to argue consent, even to a kiss cam. But the legal aspect, strangely, was not the part that struck me the most. What shocked me was the social reaction. A wave of rage, mockery, moral superiority. The comments seemed to agree: they had it coming. As if being caught in an uncomfortable moment justified the digital stoning that followed. While my mind kept repeating an old phrase: “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.
The truth is, this could happen to anyone. You’re at a bar with friends and make a joke. Someone makes a video out of it and share it on a whatsapp group. You write something clumsy online. Someone takes a screenshot. You give a lecture. Someone records it and shares a part of it, out of context, on social media. Suddenly, your moments become public property.
This is no longer a question of GDPR or consent checkboxes. We are entering a world where what we do, say, and sometimes even think can be captured, manipulated, and redistributed. If this is not enough, artificial intelligence is already amplifying and multiplying all of this, whether categorizing or turning mistakes into trends and humanity into material. The boundaries between public and private are melting faster than we can draw them.
I think the horses have already bolted, but I hope to be wrong.
I know what someone could say: “male non fare, paura non avere” (if you do no harm, you should not fear). Fair enough. But there’s a difference between choosing to share and being exposed. Between being asked and being assumed. Between accountability and punishment. What disturbs me is the growing idea that exposure is being considered as a form of justice. That virality is truth. That clicks are a moral compass.
Maybe privacy isn’t dead. But one thing is for sure: it’s no longer what we thought it was. Privacy no longer lives in laws and policies. It lives in choices. In how we film. In how we share. In what we laugh at. In what we choose not to post. In what we forgive. In the questions we forget to ask.
The Coldplay concert ended with a song. But the echo, I fear, will last much longer.
