Facebook’s policy on animal abuse images is inadequate

Kendall Jones montage of animal kills
Kendall Jones montage of animal kills which is still on Facebook! Are they enforcing their weak content policy?
Two useful tags. Click either to see the articles: Toxic to cats | Dangers to cats

Facebook says it removes

“reported content that promotes poaching of endangered species, the sale of animals for organized fight or content that includes extreme acts of animal abuse.” (Has it been amended and updated? If so please tell me)

I have that information from Huff Post but I am damned if I can find the information on Facebook. They tend to skirt around these tricky moral issues. They fudge it.

Not only that, their policy is inadequate. They refer to ‘extreme acts of animal abuse”. What about ‘any animal abuse’? What about photos depicting and encouraging the international trade in wildlife? And what about animal abuse in the guise of religious ceremonious when animals are sacrificed in the most cruel and barbaric ways. There is no place for that in modern society.

Then there are pictures of sport hunters with their kills. What about Kendall Jones and her montage (see above).

This montage is still on Facebook. She says, over and over again, that is it legal. Yes, it is legal to shoot rare and endangered species because the people who make the law are self-serving sh*ts who want to make money from granting licenses to sport hunt. This takes place in South Africa. Just because it is legal does not mean it is moral. Many laws are immoral.

Kendall Jones’s reasons justifying her sport hunting are frankly feeble.

What about this more moral approach for Facebook’s policy on removing content in the form of images or vides (this is what I’d like to see as their policy):

Facebook removes reported content that promotes poaching of endangered species, the sale of animals for organized fights, content that includes acts of animal abuse, content that promotes in any way the international trade in wildlife, content that depicts animal sacrifice at religious ceremonies, content that depicts animals killed by sport hunters notwithstanding that it is legal to sport hunt and content supporting declawing and de-vocalising of companion animals.

I am sure I have left something out. My version is much wider and it will never be Facebook policy but for hundreds of thousands of people I believe it would be more moral and it would help to improve the world and our relationship with animals.

Please search using the search box at the top of the site. You are bound to find what you are looking for.

6 thoughts on “Facebook’s policy on animal abuse images is inadequate”

  1. Facebook’s policy on animal abuse is… quite frankly, crap.

    After reporting Jalaldeen Naseem’s video and getting the bog standard FB response of no violation of their community standards. I then sent them another message asking if they could explain exactly what could be considered “likeable” about images and the promotion of animal cruelty. I also asked to know why they condoned the promotion of acts of animal cruelty (which many of these photos and videos clearly are) knowing that those acts are illegal in their respective countries. Their response was the usual FB fob-off about them taking feedback seriously.

    They should be ashamed.

    Reply
    • Well said, Michele. It surprises me (well not much) that they are so offhand about something this important to many people and of course animals. There can be only one reason why they don’t care about animal abuse pictures on FB: money. If they were stricter in removing images they believe there would be a deluge of requests and they’d have problems coping and would lose revenue at the same time. It is a lack of morality driven by profit. Isn’t that always the case?

      Reply
      • Yet they were quick to remove images of women breast feeding, which is not illegal anywhere as far as I know.

        Perhaps their community “standards” were written by Woody?

        Reply
  2. Now don’t get creeped out, but I love you for your great articles. They make my day, though not necessarily in the most cheerful way. Kindred soul way. Thank you. Signed, Not a stalker:)

    Reply
    • Thanks Leslie. I am not sure what “creeped out” means but I probably am 😉 . I want to write about nice things but whenever I research stories, and I do a lot of that, I end up at the bad stuff.

      Reply

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