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.

[Tobi]

This is terrible and deeply disturbing. So far I haven't seen any.

YouTube doesn't know what to do about it?
If it were a copyright violation, they would have a video taken down in half a day. If it were libel, they come down hard. They are also taking down videos with apparent "fake news" items. Try to upload a movie or TV show on there....and see how long it stays up!
But they "don't know what to do" with animal cruelty?

"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."

Yes, we have to do that of course.

My gosh! This has been going on for a long time. See this petition (now closed with a mere 1945 signatures):
https://www.change.org/p/tell-youtube-ce...om-youtube

It was started by J. Warner 8 years ago!

[Catherine]

Maybe 8 years ago it didn't seem like much of a problem. There were occasional videos. Now they are a frequent thing. 
People deliberately post videos of themselves abusing their own animals. J. Warner was ahead of her time. She saw a problem and tried to stop it while it was still a small problem. Now cruelty videos are everywhere. People post them and boast about what they have done. 
Now we need to react again and much more strongly this time.

We need to reclaim YouTube for funny cat videos, cute puppies and squeaking guinea pigs.
Bring back our harmless fun.