Animal Cruelty: Facebook, TikTok and YouTube Earn Millions

A recently published report by SMACC documents how animal cruelty is being promoted.

For 13 months, videos on the social media platforms TikTok, YouTube and Facebook were analysed.

Perhaps the most startling revelation is that the approximately 5’480 individual videos documented had been viewed a total of 5’347’809’262 times at the time the report was compiled. 89.2% of these were hosted on YouTube, as they are more easily found there.

This staggering figure is associated with extreme suffering for the animals involved – and the platforms hosting such content have profited from it by millions, the report states. The data clearly confirms that animal cruelty content online is a major, global problem.

The five most frequently featured animal species were birds of various kinds, dogs and cats, wildlife, snakes and primates.

Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition (SMACC)

In 2020, the Asia for Animals (AfA) network founded SMACC to respond to the hundreds of requests received by its member organisations.

Key organisations within SMACC include: Action for Primates, AnimalsAsia Foundation, Humane Society International, PETA Asia and World Animal Protection.

In emails and phone calls, the organizations were described horrific acts of animal cruelty, including the burial of live animals, the abuse of companion animals, the setting of animals on fire, and the recent fake rescue videos – all freely published on social media.

According to the SMACC report, videos found on social media platforms showed animals being drowned, having their limbs broken, and even mothers being killed and their babies taken from them.

The report states that «animals have become silent victims of the hunt for clicks and advertising dollars, as videos that promote, encourage and profit from their mistreatment are proliferating«.

Hunting and animal cruelty

Hunting videos regularly feature foxes, hundreds of bird species and wild boar, as well as animal fights.

Of the 5’480 videos that were recorded, 2’634 were assigned to the topic «hunting». These videos often depict prolonged deaths, extreme suffering, and both legal and illegal hunting methods used by hunters.

The availability of thousands of hunting videos on social media platforms promotes this cruelty.It is actively encouraged and normalised, while the activity is sold as «fun and exciting», and at an extreme cost to wildlife.

The report quotes Nick Stewart, Global Head of Wildlife Campaigns at World Animal Protection, as saying: «Wildlife are not props, toys or entertainers, they are sentient beings with a right to life.»

Adam Parascandola of Humane Society International said: «The devastating data uncovered by this investigation only scratches the surface in revealing the shocking scale of animal cruelty on social media.«

Fake animal rescue videos

This is animal cruelty in its worst form, staged for «entertainment», misleading many viewers and inflicting unspeakable suffering on animals. «Social media giants like YouTube, which have billions of followers, bear a clear responsibility to ensure that animal cruelty finds no audience«, added Nick Stewart.

So far, animal welfare organizations have had little success in combating animal cruelty videos published on YouTube, Facebook and TikTok.

The coalition added that animal welfare organizations are unable to help individual animals seen in animal cruelty videos, as they often have no information about the time or location.

At the same time, enormous resources would be required — exceeding the capacity of any single organization — to deal with the sheer volume of cruel content on these platforms.

Our recent investigation has uncovered the shocking extent of fake animal rescue videos appearing on YouTube, showing animals in terrible situations that are visibly distressed and traumatized.

Nick Stewart

Compliance

SMACC also pointed out that the problem had not been addressed on these platforms. In its report, SMACC called on YouTube, Facebook and TikTok to «lead by example and take decisive action to remove cruel content once and for all«.

They urged social media platforms to share their vision of a responsible and compassionate world in which such cruelties occur neither on social media nor in real life.

They also appealed to social media users not to view, share, or engage with such content.