Report fake animal rescue videos to YouTube administrators

You may have heard about fake YouTube animal rescue videos. To the best of my knowledge these videos emanate from Asia. What happens is this. Because people want to make a lot of money through advertising on YouTube, they target the sort of video that is attractive. Animal rescue videos are attractive. It is impossible, almost, to make a genuine animal rescue video because these events are so rare and you've got to be in the right place at the right time.

Because of these factors, unscrupulous people are creating fake animal rescue videos. So, what they do is they take an unwanted stray kitten, of which there are many in Third World countries, and they place that kitten in a precarious, life-threatening situation such as very near a snake pit or the kitten or cat is dumped into a deep pool of mud. Or they might put a jar or can over the cat's head which temporarily blinds them.

Fake animal rescues of YouTube. This one has been on their website for 2 years. Screenshot.

The next step then is to approach the animal with a smartphone in one hand recording the rescue, while the other hand is used to rescue the animal by taking off the can over their head or extricating them from a pool of mud and so on.  You can tell the video is fake partly because only one hand is used when two would be far more effective. They publish the video as genuine and many of them get a good number of hits which enhances their prospects of earning a decent amount of money from Google AdSense advertising.

One major thing wrong with this exercise is that the animals are the victims. They are the unwitting players in these mini-films. They gave no consent to be abused like this. It is a straight case of cat or dog abuse. And of course, they are deceiving the public. They are immoral and they should be deleted from YouTube. When you complain to YouTube administrators they might be deleted.

It has to be said that the YouTube administrators are very reluctant to delete anything on their platform. They believe in free speech which is great but arguably they give too much leeway and so free speech becomes hate speech and animal rescue becomes animal cruelty. It appears to me that YouTube is managed by left-wing liberals. That is not a bad thing per se. It's just that they are snowflake types. They are woke and there is little robustness about their decision-making. That's my personal view.

CLICK THIS FOR MANY PAGES ON CAT VIDEOS WHICH I USUALLY CRITIQUE

You will find that reporting a video to them which is unacceptable may be fruitless. They may delete the video a long time after receiving the report. They may not delete it. And the whole process of reporting is very opaque. There is no feedback, there is no response from them. You click your report through and it goes into a black hole. No light emanates from that hole. It is hit and hope. YouTube are not good at communicating. They do their best to not communicate.

The reason for that is because they simply don't have the manpower to deal with the plethora or flood of problems and reports. They can't manage the videos themselves so they rely on users to report problematic videos. That in itself as a model is a poor one. It is abdicating one's responsibility to ensure that all the videos on their platform are decent and will not corrupt minds or promote animal abuse or human abuse. I'm moaning about YouTube and they may punish me for it. They can be vindictive as well.

Notwithstanding all these issues, if you do bump into a video which you think is a fake animal rescue then please report it to the administrators as it might help to save lives and prevent animal cruelty.