Note: I don’t show animal cruelty videos on this page.
There is a brilliant petition going around at the moment on the causes.com website: Stop Youtube accepting and showing cruelty to animals. What is so impressive about it is that almost 500,000 people have signed up to it. The usual sort of numbers are 5,000 and even that seems to be good. So half a billion is awesome. There are definitely a lot of people who don’t like the fact that animal cruelty is shown on YouTube videos.
However, I am not sure what sort of video we are voting against. When you search YouTube for “animal cruelty” or “people being cruel to animals” you get lots of videos, nearly all of which show actual animal cruelty. But the video maker is nearly always showing animal cruelty in support of their argument that it should stop. The video is a plea that animal cruelty stops. Are these videos good or bad?
Personally I can’t watch them. I can barely look at the video icon never mind the video. Generally, these videos do not do well in terms of numbers of views. This is understandable because they are horrible.
My gut feeling is that a video made to stop animal cruelty should not show animal cruelty. On that basis I support the cause. However, there are videos, much less of them it seems to me, that show animal cruelty for the sake of it, just to try and make a high hitting video. Are these the ones that the petition is focused on? The difficulty for YouTube is distinguishing one from the other.
A video against animal cruelty should be no more than a well rehearsed statement, well said and with passion. My reason is that seeing animal cruelty damages us. Also you will get voyeurs who watch the video because they like seeing cruelty to animals and do not want to listen to the arguments against animal cruelty.
There is a significant proportion of people on the planet who like to be cruel to animals. They like to express their anger at their predicament by hurting a creature more vulnerable than themselves. It is a bit like self-harm. People who self-harm say they feel better after cutting themselves. Some of the anger and self-loathing is dissipated. I am sure the same applies to harming animals.
I believe Google – who owns YouTube – should think about this sensitive matter carefully and prioritize it. Google do great work and are the most important internet presence. With that comes serious responsibilities. Google are only just waking up to that. They support a freedom of speech approach to the point where anything goes. But that is not good enough, I am afraid. With their massive success Google have massive responsibilities. When people search for something on the internet, Google finds it. What Google finds is the information because what is does not find is buried under 30 billion web pages.
This is an example of a voyeur’s animal cruelty video. Perhaps Rudolph can comment on it?
Not for the faint hearted :: Halavatha Munneswaram Kovil – Animal Slaughter OMG cruel people
One other point worth making I believe is that we know that some of the viewers who watch these videos are uneducated and desensitized because the comments they leave clearly indicate that. They leave rude and crude comments. There are far too many comments like this on YouTube. This really is a dumbing down of humanity on a worldwide scale.
I wonder at times whether the internet is good for us. On the internet, there is a lot of dumbing down, misinformation, bad behavior and time wasting chatting about stuff that does not progress humankind. Maybe the internet is neither good nor bad. It is simply a reflection on mankind’s behavior – good and bad.
very nice channel 🙂 I like cats, too. We had several of them for many years. The last three died within two years not long ago and I was very, very sad. They were like family members and I’ll never forget them. After they had died I decided not to have my own cats again because I wouldn’t withstand the loss again. But of course I still love them and if I see one I want to stroke it and the cat wants to be stroked, too 😀
I use YouTube, Flickr and Vimeo. Vimeo is super high quality. Nice site. Flickr is a still photo site but allow short basic videos. This is my YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/broadsurf?feature=mhee
thank you for replying to my comment. It is difficult to find ”active” websites where you actually get a response 🙂
I am currently trying to find out if there is an alternative to posting my own videos on Youtube. Dailymotion looks promising but I’ll need to take a closer look before I create an account there. Here’s a screenshot of what I think an attempt to promote animal cruelty should look like:
ps. the email-address I provided with this comment is more reliable (just in case someone wants to contact me in the future)
Great comment thank you. I am shocked but not actually surprised to read that the count went down when it should have gone up. Weird and disturbing.
yes, there is a difference. It depends on the intention of the person or group of persons that post such videos. You can usually CLEARLY distinguish between a video that actually PROMOTES animal cruelty or abuse and one that alarms people. The description of the video, its title, the context, sad/ funny music, audio comments, laughter in the video, and the comments by users let us know who’s behind it. And if you feel unsure it’s most likely a promoting video.
As a ”brilliant” example of a channel that promotes animal cruelty I’ve just come across this one:
http://www.youtube.com/user/EdgunUSA
the last comment which reads that Youtube promotes animal cruelty states that the votes are not counted correctly. I have checked that and to my astonishment that’s true. I voted down and the vote down count decreased by one. Looking at the number of subscribers of that site and the number of clicks the channel has already received I suspect that Youtube does indeed promote animal cruelty. I’ve tried flagging videos like the ones in that channel as animal abuse before but to absolutely no avail. Youtube does NOT take any action. Probably because they get paid by the channel owner (for promoting his videos).
As for deleting all videos that depict animal abuse or cruelty I would say it’s not such a good idea. Youtube should instead take flagged videos very seriously and act accordingly, i.e. delete the promotes and let the alerts online so people can take legal action against the animal abusers. Also, whenever someone pays for promotion they should carefully look at the content on their OWN initiative because as soon as they are being paid to show such videos they should also be accountable. But it seems that Youtube has no interest in doing so. They rather make money with animals suffering.
Yes. Absolutely. Say no more.