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.
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)
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
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 😀
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.
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.
I wont watch any of it. Its true that just what is cruelty has to be clarified. And personally I find commenting on youtube to be offensive and depressing and furthermore there is always some young suburban male parasite who makes an offensive comment on just about any video no matter how nice it is, just because he can and he thinks its funny and he has nothing better to do with his boring life except troll around youtube making obnoxious comments. Sometimes it’s embarrassing and depressing to be a member of the human race.
Yes. Absolutely. Say no more.
I don’t think people trying to stop animal cruelty should show videos of animal cruelty.
I feel the same way about abortion protestors showing gory pictures in their protests. That kind of horrible imagery doesn’t help any cause. And in showing the animals being hurt, people who get off on that kind of thing can get ideas and will actually enjoy a video that was meant to inspire compassion. It is better to show the right way to care for animals (and people) rather than focus on what is horrible and sad. That’s why I support Place of Refuge (a ministry that provides for the needs of pregnant women and their children, both born and unborn). I’d support videos which instruct viewers in proper caretaking of their pets, in the need to spay and neuter, and videos that teach empathy for animals without focusing so much their needless suffering. If you think too much on what is sad and wrong with this world it can destroy you. I just had a DVD left on my doorstep by an anti-abortion group. Why would I even watch that? My late husband and I watched such a video together shortly before he died and we cried so hard. I still remember his distress and I’m so glad he’s in a better place, beyond feeling that distress. But I carry it still, as I carry distress over every horrible instance of animal cruelty I read about or see. Animals are completely innocent, victims of human sin in a cursed, fallen world. I sometimes wish I had died instead of Danny so I would not have to know what I know about the true nature of the evil that dwells in every human heart and the consequences of that evil for our world.
Sure, you learn about sin and death as a kid, but you don’t know what it’s about, you don’t really believe it, until you see that we live in a world that routinely, even legally, kills tiny humans and tortures innocent animals, every day, all the time. There is never a moment that one of those things isn’t happening. Which to me, is all the more reason to raise up all the good things, because for any good to happen at all in this world is such a miracle, such a gift. And there are animals who are well cared and helped by humans. That’s always the paradox– that humans among all species will take great risks to help the weak and helpless– we save tiny preemie human babies all the time and I’ve seen videos of men risking their lives to save a deer or other animal trapped in the ice on a frozen pond. You see all the time where people save a kitten who got trapped somewhere. But then at the same time we kill the weak and helpless. While some labor to save animals, others neglect and harm them or “euthanize” them in shelters. While some strive to help children, others abuse them. I guess the only answer is to just keep raising up those who do the right. As a teacher I used the “catch them being good” method all the time. It might seem simplistic, but if we could really make heroes of those who help it could start to sway society away from glorifying evil– and that’s what the gory pictures do. They glorify evil, no matter who posts them.
Humankind is very mixed up. People who routinely kill animals in a cruel way must be utterly desensitized to cruelty and emotion. I simply have to force myself to forget these things. Not to dwell on these things because, as you say, it just hurts me.
I am glad that we all agree that these videos should be prohibited. It seems we are three out of 500,000. I hope YouTube and Google recognize this and do something about it. They are unconscionably slow however.
I can hardly bear to read the titles let alone look at videos of cruelty to animals and I too sign all the petitions I can and share them. I know that sharing upsets many of my friends but we have to keep on trying to get more people to face the truth and help us in our battle to stop what cruelty we can.
Like Barbara, I have images burned into my brain, one of a cat with a contraption on his head and one huge eye pupil, suffering a cruel brain experiment, has been with me all my adult life and scientists are still legally torturing animals even now like that 48 years later. So there is legal abuse like vivisection and the declawing of cats, as well as illegal abuse and sometimes I despair it will ever get any better for animals.
The animal charities we support send us more and more information and graphic pictures and want more and more money from us to help them fight it but there is only so much we can do, it never seems to get any better and those of us who love animals and care about their abuse feel we never do enough, but what more can we do?
Like you Michael I don’t watch cruel and upsetting videos, when a petition comes round against animal cruelty, I sign it but I can’t bear to see the pictures which makes it awfully hard to sign with one eye closed or my hand over the picture, I know that the animal/animals concerned are suffering and it’s fine for me not looking and just signing but honestly the pictures haunt me for ages afterwards and there’s only so much one can take. Recent pictures of bull burning and ducks used for foi gras somehow got through my censorship and are branded on my brain as is a picture of a cat used in experimentation, me seeing these is not going to stop it happening, I am signing the petition/writing the letter, seeing the horror can’t make me do more when there’s nothing more to do. The same with videos, I abhor the sickos who watch things like that but I cannot personally stop them being put on YouTube so am not going to torture myself looking.As for horrible pictures and videos used by anti-cruelty groups I have long thought this is the wrong appraoch, yes it shocks us but they are preaching to the converted, we know, we care and we get really upset by seeing the things we are fighting in graphic detail.
I have the same problem. I remember seeing a picture of animal sacrifice of some sort about 5 years ago and I can’t remove it from my memory. It keeps coming into to mind. I really do think these pictures and videos damage us. It is as simple as that. It makes me less happy. I believe many people have the same problem and for that reason YouTube should prohibit these videos as the petition states.