The rise of YouTube animal cruelty videos

[Catherine]

For years YouTube has been a source of funny cat videos and silly puppies and squeaking Guinea pigs.
Now a dark side emerges. People are posting videos of themselves doing acts of cruelty to their pets and other animals. 
It used to be that animal cruelty was caught on video by accident. The perpetrator had not meant to be seen. Now people are committing acts of cruelty deliberately to play to an audience. Audiences are watching the videos and "liking" them.
YouTube has not yet resolved how to deal with this.


https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9766451/sh...l-cruelty/

I don't know if there is a rise in acts of animal cruelty or if these acts are now more public.
Certainly people are acting more openly and publicly. There could well be a rise in actual cruel acts because people are copying what they saw in a video.  
It is bad that it is so public right now, but it is leading to arrests and charges in some cases. 
In a changing world we have new problems to deal with.

What we can do is watch for cruelty videos and report them and we can let YouTube know we don't like  cruelty videos and report any we come across.