RAIPUR: There emerges a dangerous trend on ‘fake animal rescue’ content being shared without any restriction on social media thereby putting animals at profound risk, asserted a report released by Asia for Animals (AfA) Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition (SMACC).
The report ‘Spot the Scam: Unmasking Fake Animal Rescues’ has documented over a thousand links showing fake rescue content collected over six weeks from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and X.
The report says that such ‘fake animal rescue’ contents are shared widely but the social media platforms are not doing enough to remove them thus giving offenders essentially a free rein to promote and perpetuate animal cruelty.
SMACC, an umbrella organisation of 29 animal protection groups, has appealed to these social media companies to initiate steps in tackling fake rescue content on their platforms.
Fake rescue content features animals who have been harmed or placed in dangerous situations specifically so that the content creator can appear to rescue the animal from that situation to generate revenue from "likes" and "shares", as well as from direct donations from the viewer.
Such videos, according to the report, have managed to gather over 572 million views.
The detailed report further aims to raise awareness among the public and animal lovers, to ensure they are not exacerbating the problem, by falling for fake rescue content, generating views in the millions for fake rescue content creators.
“Fake animal rescues on social media put animals in extremely risky situations to film their “rescue.” They also profit off compassionate people, while undermining the credibility of real rescue work. This is a new form of animal abuse that traumatises, hurts, and can be fatal to animals”, said Bharati Ramachandran, CEO, Federation of Indian Animals Protection Organisations (FIAPO).
SMACC found that even the endangered species were being used by content creators. To aid social media platforms and the public, SMACC identified key indicators that can be used to determine what is real and fake.
“Some rescue content apparently looks realistic and shows animals in situations of immense danger, abandoned on the streets, buried alive or trapped in objects, being attacked by predators or in need of medical attention. Very little is known about what happens to the animals after these video clips and how they are treated by the content creator or if they are kept in suitable environments”, the report stated.