In the grand tradition of ambushing strangers for clicks, a new breed of Australian content creators has perfected the art of the street interview - except the goal isn't journalism, it's provocation. Take Emma Carson, who was strolling through Rundle Mall in Adelaide when a woman approached her and asked if she thought the unborn were human. Carson assumed she was a journalism student or researcher. She was actually talking to Elspeth Mackellar, one of six content creators at Bird Flip, an organisation pledged to "end abortion." The encounter was captured on camera and posted online, much to Carson's chagrin.

"It was only once she asked if the unborn were human that I noticed the person with a camera," Carson says. "I knew if I kept talking, she would continue to find ways to twist my words." She ended the interview but was left angry about the tactic. "The thing that irks me about people who do this rage-baiting stuff, accost people, blindside them, they don't want a proper debate because it would wipe out the points they want to make," she says. "The strategy is to just humiliate people who disagree with them."

Rage baiting, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary's publisher, is online content "deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular webpage or social media content." It's a growth industry. Other Australian influencers have been spotted approaching demonstrators at pro-Palestine protests, anti-One Nation and anti-March for Australia protests, then publishing short clips of protesters looking angry and dishevelled. Some set up tables or signs to stage "prove me wrong" scenarios - a tactic popularised by the late US far-right activist Charlie Kirk - where the well-rehearsed influencer posts content showing them "demolishing" their detractors. Others include evangelical Christians preaching or trying to debate religion with Muslims, including during Ramadan.

The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman-Grant, said last year there were "growing concerns" about street interviews that "appeared to exploit or humiliate" people, including homeless, drunk or drug-affected people, the West Australian reported. "Just because something may be technically legal does not mean it is ethical," she said.

Dr Lisa Harrison, a media and communications lecturer at Flinders University, called the ethics behind such interviews "really disappointing." "They're jumping on controversial topics. You have to wonder if it's about the controversy or the content," she said. She listed advertising, endorsements, paid appearances, sales and fundraising as potential commercial benefits. "And there's a lot of ego involved in this," she added.

In a typical interaction, MacKellar asks people if they believe in human rights, then claims it is "hypocritical" to believe in both human rights and abortion. In fact, international human rights laws protect the right to safe abortions, and do not apply to the unborn.

Prudence Flowers, a Flinders University senior lecturer in US history, says rage-baiting street interviews about abortion have been popular in the US for a while, and her work shows an increasing crossover between anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-immigration groups. She warns that people have no control once footage is posted and that engaging with street interviews is "just making money for someone else."

David Vaile, a University of New South Wales privacy and data protection researcher and former chair of the Australian Privacy Foundation, says the "rage-bait machine" risks breaching a range of state and federal laws including the surveillance devices act, privacy laws, defamation laws, and potentially stalking and harassment laws. "To the extent the recording starts or continues without the person being aware it's going on, that may trigger the breach of the Surveillance Devices Act," he said. Privacy laws also mean people should get consent for recording - but complaints often end up in a "black hole," and along with other laws are often ambiguous and weakly or rarely enforced. Publishing a video of someone else in "bad faith" and painting a false picture could be a defamation risk, or a breach of stalking and harassment laws if someone is targeted repeatedly. "And the more you disclose it or broadcast or publish it, that may be a further separate offence from the bare recording," he said.

MacKellar did not respond to a request for comment - presumably too busy editing the next viral clip.