PETITIONS
Petitions
Social media platforms hold the power to prevent and remove cruelty content on their platforms. Cruelty content could not go viral or become profitable if such platforms did not make it possible. We are calling on these social media giants to take definitive steps to stamp out this horrifying trend once and for all.
You can join us in this call by signing the petitions below, hosted by some of our SMACC member organizations.
Thank you for doing so and please share with your friends!
To YouTube asking them to stop hosting channels that promote cruelty and violence against monkeys.
To Facebook, TikTok and YouTube to take immediate action to remove animal cruelty from their platforms.
Lady Freethinker petitions.
To Google and Facebook appealing to them to make it easier to report that videos and images featuring pet apes and monkeys are cruel.
To all social media platforms asking them to stop the display of animal suffering content that are not fulfilling a purpose of information or documentation.
SMACC's Approach
Cruelty content ranges from the subtle to the extreme. From wild animals kept as pets to kittens smashed or baby monkeys buried alive; from animals pitted against one another in forced fights to staged, fake “rescues” - the animals’ distress may be obvious and caused intentionally, or it may not be apparent to some viewers or content creators. What all of this cruelty content has in common, however, is that animal suffering is recorded and presented for our “entertainment.”
We are asking all social media platforms to:
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Adopt standardised definitions, across all social media platforms and in consultation with experts, of animal cruelty and cruelty content;
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Ensure that their policies conform with these definitions, expressly prohibit cruelty content, and are adhered to;
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Immediately put into place robust monitoring systems to detect and remove cruelty content and cruelty content channels and creators without reliance on user reports;
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Improve reporting mechanisms for animal cruelty content published on their platform, and ensure that reported content violating their policies is removed;
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Stop paying channel or video owners for cruelty content;
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Ensure that content depicting animal suffering, used by animal welfare and environmental organisations for legitimate campaign or educational purposes, is differentiated from cruelty content and not removed from their platform on cruelty content grounds.
Want to make your own petition?
Please consider sharing one of the above petitions first so we can collect as many signatures as we can on these! If you need to make your own, use the points above to guide your wording, and we can help make sure our "asks" are the same. But please prioritize using the petitions already created. Thank you!