According to Twitter, bullfighting is a «sadistic pleasure»
The social network considers several videos of a bullfight that took place in Spain last Saturday to be a violation of its rules.
Twitter has temporarily suspended an account that shared videos of bullfighter Morante de la Puebla.
Specifically, it concerned the bullfight on 17 July 2021 in Algeciras, Spain, which the platform blocked on the grounds that the videos promoted «sadistic pleasure«.
The far-right José Antonio Morante, 41, whose stage name Morante de la Puebla derives from the name of the village of La Puebla del Rio near Seville, where he was born, is known as a traditional bullfighter of the Seville school. He has been married twice and is known for his love of cigar smoking.
Although it was initially reported that the account (@Moranteinfo) belonged to Morante himself, it actually belongs to one of his followers, who is responsible for publishing information about his daily life and the bullfights in which he appears.
The follower condemned this action on Twitter with a message stating that «freedom does not exist in this country. Enough is enough» and also uploaded a screenshot with the reasons why Twitter had temporarily suspended his official account.
According to Twitter, these posts do not comply with the rules, in particular the one that prohibits the publication of multimedia content that show «gratuitous bloody scenes».
«You may not share excessively graphic multimedia content (e.g. severe injuries, torture, etc.). Viewing bloody scenes can be harmful, particularly when the content is posted with the intent to incite pleasure in cruelty or sadistic pleasure«, according to Twitter.
Twitter is thus joining other platforms and social networks such as YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook, which likewise restrict and remove such content uploaded by their users.
„We see this as a very positive step by Twitter. Many people see this kind of images on social media and complain. Now Twitter has taken action”, said Aida Gascon, director of the NGO Animanaturalis, which campaigns for animal rights.
The bullfighting sector is devastated
Spaniards have mixed attitudes towards bullfighting, with some regarding it as an art form and others as a form of cruelty. In the eyes of the latter, bullfighters should actually be in prison for animal abuse.
Every year, almost 10,000 bulls die after being tormented in bullfighting arenas, and thousands more are harassed and mistreated in villages across Spain.
This year, due to Corona, more than 200 bullfights were cancelled again in spring. The bullfighting sector, aware that the coronavirus will be a hard blow, has started asking the government for the economic rescue of bullfighting. The bullfighting businesses are apparently on the verge of bankruptcy.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
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