You are surfing the internet and come across a video of a dog in a river. The animal, stuck in a piece of styrofoam, screams in fear as it tries to drift away.
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Suddenly a boy appears and approaches the animal. The whole thing is accompanied by benevolent music. In another scene, the child manages to free the dog. All’s well that ends well, right?
YouTube screenshot (PaymoneyWubby)
However, what you have just seen is no salvation. It’s a stunt that endangers the welfare of animals to entertain gullible netizens. This is just one example of more than 5000 videos of the genre circulating on the net.
Plague invading social networks
Several YouTubers, including PaymoneyWubby, which has a community of 1.1 million subscribers, have denounced these practices.
We hear him rebelling against this type of content: “We see it’s the same dog in almost all the videos. They force him to put himself at risk for the click.”
People who produce this type of content also show attacks between two animals. Predators are forced to attack prey. They are then violently pushed back by the person filming the video.
A report produced by the Asia for Animals Coalition shows that videos containing animal cruelty get around 5 billion views across all platforms. These can even be monetized with advertising.
Internet users do not hesitate to denounce these stagings on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok or Twitter. The problem is so big that moderation is not very effective.
Vice News reports that of nearly 440 videos reported to Facebook, at least 100 were still accessible.
How to spot a fake rescue video?
With information from Vice News.