By Helen Souisa for the ABC
How would you feel if one day a stranger secretly paid for your food or groceries?
The groceries were paid for swiftly without Esa noticing. Photo: Supplied / TikTok
Many might be happy about it, but some might not - especially if it was filmed and you only found out after it went viral on social media.
This is what happened to Esa - who has withheld his full name to maintain his privacy - when he went shopping at his regular supermarket in Melbourne.
When he went to open his wallet, Esa was told everything had already been paid for.
"It's about $33 something … I asked the guy [at the cash register] why it's already paid, he only said, 'It's all done'," he said.
Confused, Esa thought it might have been some kind of bonus from the supermarket.
It was only a few weeks later that he found out what really happened, after his friends showed him a video on TikTok.
The video was posted by content creator Rustam Raziev with the caption: "My mission? Being myself. Helping others. Become a better version of myself", and the hashtags #Ramadan and #Melbourne.
It has collected more than 6 million views and 330,000 likes.
"I checked [it] out and saw my video, which really creeped me out and made me upset," Esa said.
Esa, who came to Australia in 2001 as an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, said it was important to keep parts of his life private, including where he lives and details about his identity.
He didn't want anyone to see him on social media - even on his own social media accounts, he never posts personal videos of himself.
"I don't want to be famous, I don't want people to know about me … and he did it without my consent too. I wasn't happy about it," Esa said.
Esa told the ABC he felt "embarrassed, guilty, a bit shocked and sad" when he watched the video.
"Because it looked like I'm a kind of desperate person who needs help or I'm a beggar," he said.
"I have friends and family around the world, they've been calling me saying: 'Oh, you need help' and 'What happened to you? Someone's paying for your food'. I was a bit traumatised."
Similar sentiments surfaced among the 1,316 comments on the video.
One comment read: "He looks like he's going through something I feel bad", and received 12,600 likes, while another said: "Aww he looked like he needed that."
As a Muslim himself, Esa noticed the hashtag #Ramadan on Raziev's video, referring to the holy month when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk.
He understands it is an important month to share kindness with others.
"But you don't need to show it or announce it to the world that you're a kind person. If you are really doing this thing for religious reasons or for Allah, you don't need to show it to people," he said.
Esa said he wanted "the people who are doing those sort of actions or kindness for their own profit" to stop, or at the very least "ask or let the person know what's going on".
Content creator Rustam Raziev's actions have drawn controversy. Photo: Supplied / Instagram
Content creator defends 'good intentions'
Raziev said he did not want to offend Esa by paying for his groceries and posting the video to TikTok and Instagram.
"I'd just like to apologise, that it was nowhere near my intention to offend him in any way … those were my good intentions," he said.
"It's just from my heart, my personal heart, and I just wanted to help out, like a friend."
Raziev, who has been featured in multiple positive media reports, said the idea was to help 120 people during Ramadan, with 60 of them filmed on camera.
As a Muslim, Raziev told the ABC he wanted to give back to others during this month and "to show people around the world, especially the Western society, that [it's] not all about bad things and terrorism".
He also wanted "to inspire people to do the same thing and try and help someone in need".
Although there is no law that prohibits him from recording in public places, Raziev acknowledged the importance of obtaining consent from people who appear in the videos he posts online.
"I'm always trying to do that … I even have different templates for getting the video consent, but sometimes it's a bit hard … maybe only 5 per cent would say yes, unfortunately," he said.
He said this obstacle had made it difficult for him to send some inspiring messages, so he chose to post his videos without asking the subjects first.
"On the other hand I still think that I'm trying to do good … and it's always with good intention, I'm not trying to benefit from it," he said.
Do content creators get paid for viral TikTok videos?
Unlike YouTube, which has multiple ways to monetise videos, TikTok's earning methods are still limited.
In 2020, TikTok established a creators' fund scheme, where people can get paid for views on their account.
While TikTok has not revealed how much they pay, influencers who have joined the scheme said they receive from 2 to 4 US cents for 1000 views on TikTok.
That means a TikTok video with a million views could earn around $US20 to $US40.
But for now the scheme is only available for TikTokers in the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
Raziev said he did not earn anything from his Ramadan videos on TikTok.
Consent in time of social media
Annisa Beta from the University of Melbourne said consent in today's context must not merely deal with the legality of filming in a public space.
In the time of social media, she said both the producers and the consumers of content should have a voice.
"So in this case, it's not only the creators who have a voice, but so do the people in the content, as well as consumers who have the rights to give comments," Dr Beta said.
The issue came to the fore last week after a Melbourne woman who had appeared without her consent in a TikTok video showing her receiving flowers from a stranger voiced her objections to ABC Radio Melbourne, saying she felt "dehumanised".
Dr Beta said the argument that people are allowed to film in a public place does not address the ethics of capturing someone else's life or activity for one's own benefit - whether that's a financial gain, or if it's just to make them feel good about themselves.
She said people are not always aware of an individual's circumstances - whether they are refugees who could be put at risk if their privacy was breached, or if they were fleeing domestic violence, for example.
She said there were some crucial questions about consent that content creators must reflect on and answer.
"Is it enough to just say 'this is public space and this is content? Why can't you ask after you have finished filming, Can I upload this?'," she said.
"At least these types of questions should be there."
Esa gave his consent to publish his image with this article.
- ABC