PETITION TARGET: Telegram CEO Pavel Durov
This is a joint campaign by Lady Freethinker and Action for Primates.
Sadistic streams of videos featuring baby monkeys skinned alive, sealed in jars with boiling liquid, and blown apart by fireworks forced down their throats continue to run rampant on social media, especially Telegram, a popular encrypted messaging service.
In 2021, Lady Freethinker and Action for Primates first exposed the phenomenon of private monkey “hater” groups in which individuals in the US, UK, and other countries used Telegram to purchase custom torture content from video makers in Indonesia.
That report led to a BBC investigation and documentary, The Monkey Haters, in 2023. Since then, countless individuals have been arrested around the world for their involvement in creating and distributing monkey torture content.
However, online monkey torture groups persist on Telegram, buying, selling, and sharing videos of horrifically gruesome acts of baby monkeys being tortured in unspeakable ways.
The twisted videos have even gone mainstream, spreading to other widely used social media platforms.
Despite previous claims that Telegram could not “proactively patrol private groups,” the platform recently removed over 15 million groups and channels related to harmful content using AI-based moderation. Meanwhile, monkey torture groups remain active.
It is time for Telegram to stop being complicit in the torture of innocent animals and use this readily available technology to finally crack down on the extreme animal cruelty prevalent on its platform.
Please sign our petition urging Telegram to remove existing animal torture content, ban animal torture groups, and finally take a stand against animal cruelty.
