Facebook accused of promoting violent primate abuse content
Animal rights coalition SMACC slams Meta for allowing graphic animal abuse on Facebook and incentivizing harmful content through its Creator Badge system.
An animal rights coalition has slammed social media giant Meta for allowing and rewarding content of violent primate abuse on its platform, Facebook.
The Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition (SMACC), a group of over thirty animal protection organizations worldwide, were alerted to two public accounts sharing graphic primate abuse material that had appeared in their feeds.
The content shows macaque monkeys, typically infants, being drowned, slapped, and choked. One video entitled 'Baby Learns to Swim' shows a struggling baby macaque being forced underwater.
The accounts have gained more than 100,000 followers collectively, with many users responding positively to the abusive content, reacting with emojis such as thumbs-up and laughing faces, or posting messages of encouragement. One user on the platform wrote: “Squeeze it longer and harder until its eyes pop out.”
“The videos are vile. It is deeply disturbing that people are creating and engaging with content that clearly depicts animal abuse and cruelty. When animals are manipulated or placed in harmful situations for the sake of dramatic social media content, their welfare is severely compromised.”
Since late March, the accounts have escalated the frequency of their posts, sharing multiple videos per day that show increasingly violent abuse of monkeys.
Meta’s content guidelines state the company will remove content that is “particularly violent or graphic” and add warning labels to shield imagery on sensitive content.
However, despite repeated reports from SMACC through Facebook’s official channels, Meta has failed to remove the content or accounts, or to take meaningful steps to prevent the abuse from continuing to be shared on its platforms.
In one case, Facebook reviewed footage showing a baby macaque trapped in a bucket of water and struggling to stay afloat. But the social media giant ruled it would not be removed, despite the video appearing to violate Meta’s own content policies.
Meta even awarded one of the pages a ‘Creator Badge’, a virtual reward typically reserved for accounts that post regularly and drive high engagement. Meta's own guidelines state, the 'Creator Badge is awarded to accounts that meet quality, originality, and integrity standards'.
To keep the badge, accounts must post at least one 30-second reel per week, alarming SMACC that Facebook is effectively incentivizing the continued posting of animal abuse content.
SMACC is calling for the immediate removal of these accounts, a full review of Facebook's content moderation practices, and transparency on how abusive content continues to generate profit.
“Meta and all social media platforms must take responsibility by shutting down these content creators and sending a clear message that animal cruelty will not be tolerated. They must also thoroughly review their content policies to ensure this is stopped and take action to stop animal cruelty content being uploaded in the first place. The creators are making this for financial gain - let’s cut that income source off. Don’t watch, don’t engage, report.”
Facebook has long been under fire for monkey cruelty content on the platform. A 2023 report by SMACC, “The cruelty you don’t see: The suffering of pet macaques for social media content”, found Facebook to be the platform with the highest amount of monkey abuse videos. The most prevalent cruelty documented was “deliberate physical torture,” with disturbing footage showing monkeys being beaten, buried alive, set on fire, and subjected to other violent acts.
Take action: Social media users are encouraged to not watch or engage with abusive animal content, but instead report cruelty content to the platforms. Learn more about how to report distressing content via SMACC’s helpful resource, “Report it! How to help animals by reporting social media cruelty content”.
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