I woke up on the 2nd of January to kikiki-ing on Naija twitter. Banter everywhere. Everybody seemed to be awake despite it being past 5 in the morning. The topic of conversation: Nigerian billionaire and his involvement with an African American woman. On New Year’s Day, the lady took to social media to announce that her heart was broken by the Nigerian Billionaire.

Now 2nd of January started (at least on Nigerian side of twitter) with a clubhouse conversation with this woman. She had taken a room to talk about the relationship among other sexual matters. Case in point, her recently ended relationship with Cement Maestro. Oh and she shared a picture of them together – basically, proof. Hence, the topic of this post.

While what a man does in his private time is none of my business, this post is about privacy and consent in the digital space especially on social media – and why some brands will NEVER repost content online unless they have consent from everyone involved (i.e. everyone involved in the material from photographer, models, sound artists, director, or even the poster) or unless it’s content they outrightly paid for.

I’ll start with a familiar example. You are at a owambe and the music is lit. Everyone is dancing and having a good time. Suddenly, there is this guy who is dancing off the beat and making a mess. You whip up your phone and start making a video. Then you post it to twitter. 5 minutes later, kaboom! This video is trending and the subject doesn’t even know. Suddenly, he is getting calls from friends and family telling him he has “blown”, thanks to an embarassing video of him going viral online. He checks, sees the video and he is uncomfortable with it. He traces the source and finds you. A few days later, you get a lawsuit in millions of Naira in your private message telling you that because of your actions, you have succeeded in making their client a joke online and this has led him to lose certain business opportunities. You are shook because “ordinary video”???? Well, here is what happened – you shared someone else’s moment without getting their consent on whether it is okay to share. In pursuit of trends, you have made someone the object of public ridicule.

In this part of the world, it’s so easy to disregard privacy especially with people we have personal relationships with (cousins, nephews, siblings, parents, lovers, partners, etc). It’s even worse because these days, we all go around with our phone cameras taking videos and pictures of not just our lives, but also of complete strangers. While not all shares are bad, sharing without consent can damage reputation, end relationships or worse, put people at risk. It’s interesting that when most people talk about consent in Nigeria, it’s mostly in the context of sex. Has anyone thought to ask why any of the social giants have privacy policies that you literally check “I agree” to everytime a new account is opened?

Let’s look at memes. Those GIFs or pictures that have somehow become essential in today’s social interactions, adding a bit of humour to conversations here and there. While memes are often user generated, they may contain images of people whose permission needed to be sought. More importantly, when these memes contain images of children. But we all know how that goes. (Wahala for who wan ask Paw Paw for permission o. Or Gabby for rights to use Kaavia o. )

The question for social creators (cue individuals & influencers) is how do you navigate all of the privacy landmines while still staying relevant or interesting on social media? The best way to go is the way of original creation. In simple terms, create your own content. Or simulate (recreate) that content that you think will trend using your own people or resources. As an individual, how much viral content can you really put online especially when your competitors are the popular content publishing platforms who already have huge following and which are already designated handles for most people? But then, original content is not cheap – it demands thought, time, creativity and perhaps, production resources. They are not as easy as the event happening outside your window which you could simply capture on your mobile.

So what happens in cases where consent is not the issue? What if consent was initially given and later, the subject revokes it? Well, as with sex, when your partner says no, you stop and call it a day.