Influencer ordered to pay $20K after refusing to remove up-skirt Instagram reels
A Canadian influencer and Kick streamer has been ordered to pay $20,000 in damages after posting up-skirt videos of a woman to Instagram and Facebook without her consent.
Sherif ‘Vibrophone’ Elbishlawi runs an Instagram account with more than 100,000 followers, where he posts videos of himself approaching women outside nightclubs in Vancouver and Las Vegas.
The videos and Kick streams typically show Elbishlawi convincing women to let him lift them into the air. In some clips involving women wearing skirts, the stunt exposes their underwear to the camera.
According to a July 9 decision from British Columbia’s Civil Resolution Tribunal, a woman identified as Z.D. agreed to be lifted while she was drunk outside a nightclub.
However, the footage showed her skirt being moved and lifted, partially exposing her buttocks and underwear. One of the videos also captured footage up her skirt.
The woman asked Vibrophone not to upload the videos, but the influencer either ignored her requests or demanded that she meet him in person, reportedly telling her: “I don’t do favors for strangers.”
Instagram/vibr0phoneInfluencer reposted videos after Meta removed them
The footage was posted to Instagram and Facebook, where it received between 30,000 and 40,000 views before Meta removed it and deactivated Elbishlawi’s accounts.
Elbishlawi later uploaded the videos again using a new account. The influencer, who never apologized and maintained that he did no wrongdoing, argued that the woman consented to the stunt and claimed he did not realize the footage qualified as intimate imagery.
Tribunal member Maria Montgomery rejected his argument, noting that Meta had removed the footage twice.
“It appears [Elbishlawi] used the videos to gain social media exposure,” Montgomery wrote, adding, “the videos were potentially used to generate revenue.”
“While not motivated by an intent to cause harm, I find the possibly exploitative nature of this conduct troubling.”
The woman sought $35,000 for mental distress, describing the “humiliation and embarrassment” of knowing the videos were available to acquaintances who followed Vibrophone.
She also said she suffered anxiety over whether the footage would resurface and continually checked his social media accounts.
Montgomery awarded her $10,000 in compensation, $5,000 in aggravated damages and another $5,000 in punitive damages.
The tribunal said Elbishlawi’s refusal to remove the footage, decision to repost it and lack of an apology were “deserving of rebuke” and “markedly departs from ordinary standards of decent behavior.”
This isn’t the first time an influencer has been sued in Canada. Earlier this year, Ontario Tech University sued YouTuber Fique Ayub after he disrupted lectures by cooking curry in class and throwing it at students.
