After months of research and data collection the Asia For Animals (AFA) Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition (SMACC) has made public its damning findings, with the launch of a report,
“Making Money From Misery - How social media giants profit from animal abuse.”
Supporting the AFA, Advocating Wild is assisting to shine a light on the misery suffered by animals at the hands of social media profiteers through this report.
Social media has emerged as a primary source of misleading, hateful, and often dangerous content. Sadly, animals have become voiceless victims of the scramble for clicks and advertising dollars, as videos promoting, encouraging, and profiting from their abuse run rampant. The Asia for Animals Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition (SMACC) has released a report that reveals the scope of the cruelty content problem on today’s largest social media platforms.
Cruelty content takes many forms, from the subtle and probably unintentional, to the very obvious and clearly intentional. The vast majority of content that SMACC documented appears to fall into the latter category. There is footage of people eating live animals; there are films of infant monkeys being buried alive. Kittens are stepped on or set alight. Cruelty content is posted in order to gain recognition in the form of likes, comments, or shares, or for financial remuneration. SMACC member Lady Freethinker estimated that in videos logged over three months in 2020, YouTube earned up to $12 million from the sharing of animal cruelty content, with the content creators themselves earning nearly $15 million. Clearly, animals are suffering for the sake of entertainment and profit.
“Cruelty content is hurtling out of control as social media platforms allow such egregious abuse of animals to be normalised in the eyes of the general public. Platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Tik Tok have a moral responsibility of care to promote kindness content and end suffering in whatever form it takes.”
Jill Robinson MBE, Dr med vet hc, Hon LLD, Founder and CEO of Animals Asia Foundation.
The report and what we can all do to help end these despicable practices can be found here: https://www.asiaforanimals.com/smacc-report
Please share far and wide and report any posts involving animals that you feel are inappropriate.