Dogpatch Press

CONTENT WARNING – Part (1) A Killer – (2) A Trend – (3) A Watchdog

The frustration is palpable. Moxxey publishes stories of atrocious behavior to animals, but how can it be stopped when huge websites have channels full of it?

Moxxey runs Rodent Club on Livejournal. Livejournal isn’t active like it was years ago, but citizen reporting can start anywhere, and reaching out from there is a good idea for an activist with a purpose. (I think he should also join the Trusted Flaggers in Part (2). And keep sharing cute pet stories for more notice!)

Moxxey returns comments about Part 1-2:

“This is a good start to helping expose and explain the problem that these social platforms are giving to animal cruelty perpetrators, and what needs to be done to fix this. A bit more needs to be said about small animal cruelty regarding hamsters, guinea pigs, rats, mice, rabbits, baby birds, etc. Too often they’re not protected under cruelty laws or seen as not important because they are small creatures.

The Reptile Channel is just one of these horrific channels creating “live feeding” videos under the guise of education. It’s really cruel entertainment for a profit and a very twisted audience. No matter what you try to do to report it on the AI reporting systems for Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc., nothing ever gets done to remove the videos.

Even with an AI system, there’s no excuse for not having proper options to signify that when there’s animal cruelty — it’s time to get a human moderator involved! Facebook seems to have one of the worst reporting systems, which never give the proper option boxes to check, nor an explanation of what’s going on. They almost always respond, “Sorry we did not find the selected post to go against our community guidelines”. 🙁

What is needed is more news coverage by video, news pages and TV to let the public know what’s secretly going on with animal cruelty online.”

Rat tickling for science on Rodent Club. “The study offered new insight into play behavior, and how it is an important evolutionary trait among mammals.”

(Q&A): The Reptile Channel was my introduction to such themed channels for cruelty entertainment. What are some more examples?

From what I can see, there are at least 50 – 100 channels on Youtube using live feeding as an excuse for cruelty entertainment. My blog has reports on channels such as Reese Pythons, Raas Reptiles, Reptar’s Rampage, Golden Squad Feedings and more.

Golden Squad made a mock “Furs vs Scalies” basketball game video where he put live mice on a toy basketball hoop for his tegus to snatch up and kill. This monster and his audience thought it was funny, making a twisted Space Jam mockery with the suffering of real animals. He has teamed up with the Snake Meal cruelty channel to collab their efforts and get more viewers.

Is this still a problem when it’s necessary to feed personal pets?

Having worked in animal rescue for many years, I can say that the live feeding is unnecessary! Even the pickiest of predators can be trained to eat pre-killed food, but most owners are either too lazy to learn how, don’t care, or enjoy the cruelty. Many overfeed or feed at the wrong time. Some prey can injure or kill. Owners make poor choices, then scramble to give pets away.

There’s a lot of bad stuff on the net and it’s hard to track it all. How do you try to get companies to act? 

I’ve been busy reporting and screencapping the horrible videos, trying to contact Google execs and Susan Wojcicki the CEO of Youtube. I’ve written to people in US Congress and the Senate who are against animal cruelty, trying to get laws changed and ban live feeding. I’ve shared my petition against live feeding with all the governors in the USA and premiers in Canada.

Petition comment

I tried messaging Amazon about Raas Reptiles offering Amazon gift cards to people who post the funniest captions about the cruelty. I had thought this might trigger Amazon and put pressure on Youtube, because it puts them in a bad light, seeing their gift cards being rewards for it. They didn’t answer. I’ve tried reporting Paypal accounts: no answer. When my rescue friends and I reported Reptar’s Rampage (Ryan Ploof) as a fundraising violation to GoFundMe, they replied it was not in violation when we point out the cruelty it creates.

I have started screencapping commercial ads on Youtube playing during animal cruelty and sending them to advertisers to let them know their ads are part of funding this. Many companies have replied, saying that they don’t want to be associated and will contact Youtube about it. Hopefully this will have an effect, along with a petition and news story in The Guardian.

The Guardian: YouTube must remove videos of animal cruelty, says charity

“Getting the video-sharing platforms to remove the videos — or even provide a response — has proven frustratingly difficult. That’s why numerous animal welfare groups have banded together to form the Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition (SMACC) and bring an entire movement to the companies’ proverbial doorsteps.” – Press release on Ladyfreethinker.org

The SMACC website has resources like a category breakdown and volunteer submission area.

What do they act on?

Youtube actually did something when I flagged a guy who made a mock Thanksgiving video where he chucked a live turkey in with his huge Boa Constrictor snake, and that was removed within hours of it being flagged.

But Youtube has pretty much left up videos of rabbits getting bashed with a metal pipe by an angry owner because they bit him when he held them wrong. There’s versus videos of fighting between pets and wild animals, birds of prey vs small mammals, cats and or dogs vs each other or versus mice, rats or birds. People target shoot wild animals just for fun. Youtube has not removed any of them, even when I had 50 rescue friends flag a video!

It’s disgusting how useless their flagging system actually is. But it spots background music or TV/movie videos uploaded to their site with the fastest of speed and efficiency. I think that Youtube doesn’t care about cruelty or even human suffering like vehicle accident or brawl/fight videos which trolls edit and upload many different times in different variations.

I would think companies should be first to act on their own content. But I was told of a case where YouTube was so slow with escalation replies that after 4 months, an animal owner was arrested before they even read the email!  Can you say more about how much the system doesn’t help with?

In the past they’ve removed robot battle videos thinking they were animal abuse. As far as how many animal abuse channels there are, if there are lets say 100 small animal live feeding cruelty channels, then there are about twice or three times for sport hunting of the wildies, and I would say 500-1000 for cats, dogs, birds, monkeys and any other large animal you can imagine. We’ve got to be talking minimum 2000 cruelty channels, but from seeing all the recommended videos pop up it’s more likely to guess ten thousand plus.

Youtube’s system will automatically recommend these for families and kids, when all they want to watch are cute pets or wildlife frolicking in the yard or forest. Some Youtubers label their videos as pet videos, which sneaks them past Youtube reporting and they also want to gain more views by shocking the pet fandoms.

Data could make better cases. Do you know about average views or income for these channels?

For viewership, older well established channels sometimes have 10-25K views per video, while smaller/newer ones may average 100-200 views; probably about 1/3 are well established. For money Youtube pays out per channel, one analysis said that a Youtuber can make $3-$5 per 1000 views and that Youtube will pay out when $100 worth of views are reached, so that means a 20K video will pay out (or the sum of a bunch of videos together.) I have also seen quite a few advertise and link to TeeSpring, selling shirts with their logos.

It makes me wonder about requesting screening to approve animal channels (like from a vet, a school showing real education value, or animal welfare org).

Trying to put the word out to stop the cruelty is good enough. What we need is a way to inform people in charge, and if that doesn’t work, as many on-line media outlets, newspapers or news channels as possible.

MOXXEY’S LIST: YOUTUBE’S ANIMAL CRUELTY HALL OF SHAME

I have compiled a list of cruelty channels that I have come across and reported on so far. Many more were recommended by Youtube.

At time of posting, Moxxey’s most recent find is yet another cruelty channel that Youtube won’t remove: Irondogg Reptiles. It’s full of videos of feeding baby rats to frogs. The About page ironically denounces “hate” and “negativity”… do they protest too much?

A REAL POSITIVE CLOSING:

Part (2) shares National Geographic: How fake animal rescue videos have become a new frontier for animal abuse. Moxxey tells me that the activist organization Lady Freethinker has the support of National Geographic, who will be doing a TV episode to expose Youtube animal cruelty.

More news articles:

• YouTube policy under question after animal abuser ‘Peluchin Entertainment’ walks free after breaking ToS
• YouTube removes videos of robots fighting for ‘animal cruelty’.
• YouTube must close this channel for animal abuse
• PETITION: JUSTICE FOR BABY MONKEY ABUSED FOR YOUTUBE VIDEO
• The Chinese animal circus abuse video which sparked outrage on Weibo
• Youtuber sparks outrage for torturing and eating live animals in horrific videos | Totally Vegan Buzz
• Get Ssoyoung banned from YouTube, for torturing and eating live animals
• Social media outrage as YouTube prankster shows pet chimp ‘stoned’ • Pet Rescue Report
• (Why they do it): How Much Do Youtubers Make & How to Become a Youtuber – Intuit Turbo Blog

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