Yoga instructor publicly kicks out student after discovering he's been secretly filming classes for his 340K TikTok account for months: ‘People trusted me to keep that space safe’

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  via Unsplash+ (via Andrej Lišakov)

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• AITA for confronting my yoga student in front of the whole class after finding out he's been filming us for months?

  I've been teaching yoga for about eight years, the last four out of my own small studio. I have maybe 30 regulars and a few drop-ins each week. It's a tight community, people know each other, trust each other, and that atmosphere took years to build. 
   

  A big part of why people come to my 7am class specifically is because it feels safe and low-pressure. Several of my students have mentioned they chose a small independent studio over a gym precisely because they dont want to feel observed or judged.

• Last Tuesday a student from my evening class came to me after the session and showed me a TikTok account. Turns out one of my morning regulars, a guy named Derek who has been coming for almost a year, has been filming the classes from his mat and posting the videos. 

   

  The account has 340,000 followers. The videos show me cueing poses, walking between students, sometimes adjusting people. You can clearly see faces. He never asked me, never asked the other students, never mentioned it once.

• For a lot of people, yoga classes are supposed to feel like one of the few places where nobody’s watching, judging, or turning everyday moments into online content. That’s exactly why this instructor was horrified after discovering that one of her longtime students had allegedly been recording classes and posting the footage to TikTok for months.

• I confronted him the next morning before class while people were setting up their mats. I know that maybe wasnt the smartest move but I had not slept and I was genuinely shaking. I told him I knew about the account, that he had been filming my students without consent for months, and that he needed to leave and not come back. 

  He tried to say it was "just content" and that nobody was identifiable which is completley false. Two other students recognized themselves in the comments of his videos.

  He left but now he's posting about it, saying I "humiliated him publicly" and his followers are leaving some pretty unpleasant reviews on my studio page. A few people think I should have handled it privately first. Maybe they're right. 

  But I keep thinking about the students who trusted me to keep that space safe and I dont really feel bad about how fast I acted.

  -Mythpuls3R

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  via Unsplash+ (via Getty Images)

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• Most commenters agreed the instructor acted appropriately given the situation, especially since multiple students had unknowingly appeared in the videos. Still, others argued that publicly confronting him in front of the class may have escalated the situation more than necessary.

• absolutnonsense

  NTA. And as a society we really need to start doing something to oppose these people who seem to think that the entire world is their production stage and that the entire population are their extras.

• 3bag

  Contact TikTok and look for him on other SM platforms, make sure to make complaints about this. Contact your local non-emergency police to ask their advice and to see what can be done to delete the videos and stop the harrassment.

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  via Unsplash+ (via Solen Feyissa)

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• u2125mike2124

  NTA. The only thing they’d be concerned about is whether or not, in your release form, that you specifically prohibit filming of any others or yourself during class or in the studio as a whole. 

  But calling him out in front of the whole class Nah you’re golden on that one.

  And I would publish his TikTok account to anybody else that was in the class so that they can go after him for publishing their pictures without their permission.

• WarDog1983

  You need to serve him w papers to get him to take them down

  You also need to ban him from your studio

  And have a clearly stated “no filming policy”

  That man is a creep

• NessaGuin

  Filming gym content should be a massive no no in every establishment by now.

  But this falls under voyeurism I'm sure, the UK has a fair few channels (some YouTube shorts ended up in my feed a few days ago) mostly centred around Manchester where people just film women walking around at night.

  Skirting laws as it is fine to film in public, they also don't up skirt, which IS or should be illegal, it was on the table at one point, but someone tried putting in some unrelated heavy handed big brother stuff in it, so it wasn't passed and people assumed it was because they wanted up skirting to be legal, no they read the fine print and were against it being added.

  Now these are on the street, where in many countries no one is expected to have privacy, hence why many are still on YouTube, but this is inside a venue where people DO expect some form of privacy and he's not filming himself to get his form, he's probably only there to get something for him and his viewers to enjoy with one hand.

  You did right by calling him out AND in front of the class so they can all be aware their faces or body is online for all and sundry to see, perhaps they can use various methods to legally get the videos removed as they didn't consent to be filmed and this wasn't on the street but in a private venue.

  If it is something you can get the police involved in, get the police involved.

   

• yrabl81

  NTA.

  It's not ok to film a private class.

  As a photographer I only s**t unknown people at events I'm the official photographer.
  Events in the community, like school plays I  s**t and release it through the school.
  The school does asks me sometimes to be the official photographer of traditional ceremonies such as start of the year.

  I don't know TikTok that much, not my cup of tea, but check if on videos and photos you appear you can report and get them off the platform, or maybe even get the account blocked.

• Most people seemed to agree that secretly filming strangers in what’s supposed to be a safe, low-pressure environment crosses a pretty obvious line. The real debate wasn’t whether the student was wrong, but whether the instructor’s public confrontation was justified after months of broken trust and unwanted internet exposure.

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