Video 'auditors' are making money out of showing our town in bad light, says Blackpool council leader
“The reason they are doing it is purely to make money and exploit people.”
Self-styled ‘auditors’ who provoke conflicts on film and record real-life drunken fights for clicks are doing Blackpool a massive disservice, says the leader of the council.
Cllr Lynn Williams says content creators, including those from out of town, are homing in on Blackpool’s night time scene to deliberately show or cause mayhem.
There have been physical fights involving men, as well as women, who have been drinking and are barely aware they are being filmed. One scene showed a man throwing a glass at a rival which smashed against a nightclub wall and could have caused a serious injury.
In other scenes, the film-makers appear to be directly involved in conflict themselves or even provoking situations, which they then film and publish.
Content appears on sites such as Facebook, Tiktok and YouTube.
Cllr Lynn Williams, Leader of Blackpool Council, said: “It’s like a kind of poverty porn, where these people are looking to provoke a reaction out of already tense situations.
“The reason they are doing this isn’t to report on situations in any kind of investigative or human interest way, it’s purely to make money and exploit people.
“This seems to be such a growing trend that if you are on social media, it’s becoming really hard to escape it. It’s appalling.”
She added: “I’m aware this kind of content is being filmed across the country, not just Blackpool, but we do not want people to have these negative views our of our town.
“Blackpool is a major tourist resort with millions of visitors each year and this creates a really poor and false reflection of what goes on here.”
Apart from individuals attempting to generate viral outrage for clicks and advertising revenue, there are fears that such content could potentially escalate local friction into more serious criminal incidents.
Police officers have frequently been filmed as they attempt to deal with late night disturbances.Cllr Williams said she had little expectation that such footage would be monitored or censored by the IT platforms which hosted them.