Whereas Facebook has been helping fight cruelty and abuse inflicted on animals, the site is also a resort for animal abusers who post pictures and videos of their sick behavior. There are pages glorifying animal abuse on Facebook, and animal rights advocates want them all banned.
An example of such abusive content is Aaron Neilson’s Facebook page, pointed to in Melissa Burdick’s petition on Care2. The petition asks Facebook to remove Neilson’s page since it promotes cruelty to animals via numerous photos showing him next to animals that are victim of his trophy killing.
The petition reminds that Facebook does hold a policy of removing content that is sadistic or glorifies violence, as is apparent from their statement: “We remove reported content that promotes poaching of endangered species, the sale of animals for organized fight or content that includes extreme acts of animal abuse.”
As more and more activists speak up on social media, led by Facebook and Twitter, industrial and corporate interest is increasingly getting exposed and getting on the defensive. The Huffington Post published a blog yesterday about a Cornell University study that has become the subject of speculation for concluding that content on social media is creating excessive fear of unsafe ingredients in foods.
