PETITION TARGET: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, X owner Elon Musk, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan
A baby macaque is pinned while his arm is struck repeatedly with a hammer. A puppy is scruffed and held out the window of a speeding car. An orange cat’s chest is crushed under the knee of a faceless man. And it is all caught on camera by the perpetrators of this violence.
These videos were not pulled from fringe “dark web” sites. These videos, and many others like them, are available on mainstream social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube. Many of these videos are even used as advertisements for secret encrypted chats on Telegram, where animal abusers share sick videos for their own twisted amusement.
In under two months, Lady Freethinker’s investigators discovered more than 2,300 links depicting unspeakable animal cruelty, totaling over a billion views.
LFT investigators also uncovered hundreds of videos depicting insidious fake rescues. These videos depict staged “rescues” of animals who have been put in perilous situations to evoke emotional responses from unsuspecting viewers and encourage engagement. As we have previously reported, these videos prey upon compassionate social media users and often solicit donations for fraudulent organizations.
Reporting harmful content rarely leads to removal. Despite content regulation rules that should require that both outright cruelty and fake rescue videos be removed when reported, more than 75% remained after reporting.
Even when content is removed, the harm caused by viewing it is irreparable, especially for children. One recent literature review found that witnessing animal cruelty can have a lasting, detrimental impact on children and that witnessing violence increases a child’s likelihood of committing violence against humans and animals.
Animals should never be abused for clicks and likes and no one should have to view this despicable content, especially children.
Sign our petition demanding that Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, TikTok, X, and YouTube remove animal cruelty content from their platforms and take proactive steps to prevent it from being posted in the first place.
