Home » Violence against animals on social media: 5.3 billion views for videos of abuse and torture in one year

Violence against animals on social media: 5.3 billion views for videos of abuse and torture in one year

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The automatic systems, the filters, the artificial intelligence, the reviews of real operators. On platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Facebook – which also boast exciting results every year with respect to content banned by their terms of use and removed effectively and quickly – are not enough to stop the horror of animals. Torture, abuses of all kinds at times unspeakable, cruelty of various kinds have in fact accumulated over the course of a year something like 5.3 billion views on the three combined platforms.

This is explained by a shocking report signed by Smac, Asia for Animals Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition, which identified 5,480 specific links of videos containing criminal and unbearable gestures against animals of all species between July 2020 and August 2021. One an endless audience of users witnessed torture, mutilation, prolonged suffering and finally killings of dogs, cats, monkeys, reptiles, birds. Among the disgusting contents of the clips viewed by the association there are baby monkeys buried alive or tormented with the most absurd tricks, kittens kicked or set on fire, animals eaten alive and puppies of various species left to be killed by snakes.

According to the coalition of which acronyms such as Peta Asia, Humane Society International or Wildlife Alliance are part, there are four types of abuse that can be identified on social media. They range from the less serious, or rather unintentional, to the blatantly criminal ones: the first form, which the group born last year defines “ambiguous and unintentional”, are for example the contents that include selfies with wild animals or the humanization of animals. They do not violate the rules of social platforms but, in fact, they risk promoting attitudes such as animal trafficking, other illegal activities and a completely incorrect approach towards living beings. The second type, “obvious and unintentional,” includes photos or videos of animals being forced to do things they can’t or shouldn’t do. Another level is that of “ambiguous but intentional” contents such as making fun of a caged monkey, filming a wild kitten being devoured by street dogs, filming shows with humiliated and endangered wild animals. The last, the most serious, contains the most obscene, violent and painful gestures. In the vast majority of cases, explains Smacc, the immortalized abuses are obvious and clearly intentional: this is the case in 78% of cases on Facebook and 89.6% on YouTube while on TikTok 65.5% of videos are classified as ” ambiguous and unintentional ”, but there are still more than 10% of clips with an evident character of violence.

Birds, dogs and cats, wild animals such as wild boars, reptiles and primates are the most frequent victims of those gestures, including deliberate physical or mental torture, prolonged and suffering killing, hunting with the most unthinkable means and tools and exploitation of animals as “entertainers”. There is no shortage of protected species such as pangolins or gibbons. Need some more examples? In the report there is no shortage: from the monkey dressed as a human being and forced to drink vodka or dressed as a health worker and forced to spray disinfectant spray to the myriad of abused puppies. Another kind of abuse, unfortunately very popular, is the one known as “fake rescue”: the specimens are deliberately placed in situations of enormous danger, often wrapped and held by pythons or other snakes, only to be “saved” by the authors of the video. or their associates. The report ends with a long and detailed classification of the types of abuse and torture, what users can do to counter the dissemination of these materials and who gets rich: two of the YouTube channels that hosted these videos, for example, counted between 30 and 45 million subscribers, 15 channels between one and five million and over 77 channels between 50 thousand and 100 thousand followers. One video, for example, has been viewed over a billion times.

On the sad podium of the countries where it was possible to identify the origin of the videos broadcast on TikTok, YouTube and Facebook are Indonesia with 1,626 clips, the United States with 296 and some Asian locations not better identified in 249 cases. Followed by Australia with 135 videos, Europe with 112, Cambodia with 83, Ireland with 74, South Africa with 64. While the areas from which they were actually uploaded online are mainly Indonesia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

According to the analysis, YouTube could have grossed something like 12 million dollars from views of this content in just three months in 2020 and more, 15, would have ended up in the pockets of those who broadcast them on their channels: “Unfortunately animals have become voiceless victims of the rush for clicks and advertising dollars while the videos that promote, encourage and profit from their abuse are rampant “, reads the document, very detailed and in some ways unpublished on the subject. We need different and more stringent policies, more effective monitoring and better calibrated on animals, heavy penalties for those who violate the rules, a series of shared standards to be implemented without exception on all social platforms. In short, the battle is long and complex.

Only YouTube replied to the issue, prompted by Newsweek, explaining that “content depicting violence or abuse on animals has never been allowed on YouTube. We apply our standards using a combination of machine learning and human review and periodically review our standards to make sure they are up to date. ” The Google-controlled platform acknowledges that “this work is in progress. Earlier this year, we expanded our Violence Policy on Animal Abuse Content to more clearly prohibit those with deliberate physical suffering or harm to animals, including content showing animal rescue that has been staged and place the animal in harmful scenarios. ”Evidently, this is not enough to stop this pain machine.

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