[HN Gopher] Fake animal rescue videos have become a new frontier...
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Fake animal rescue videos have become a new frontier for animal
abuse
Author : miles
Score : 140 points
Date : 2021-08-29 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nationalgeographic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nationalgeographic.com)
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Leave kids, and animals, out of your narcisstic filthy Lucre
| videos.
|
| I was glad when that aussie was stabbed in the heart by a Batray.
|
| And yes--I know it's complicated in his case.
|
| Sorry, but any exploitation of animals bother me, along with
| phony nonprofits.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| > Sorry, but any exploitation of animals bother me, along with
| phony nonprofits.
|
| Make sure you don't ignore the exploitation and abuse that's
| inherent in the animal agriculture industry. Don't consume or
| use animal products if you want to avoid supporting animal
| abuse.
| rozab wrote:
| When I first tried out TikTok a while back, the initial set of
| videos I was 'seeded' with included a great deal of really
| shocking animal abuse videos (dogs that had been buried in mud or
| concrete and are 'rescued', lots of animals being cooked or eaten
| alive, etc). I didn't interact with anything in the app but as
| these made me pause in shock, it lead me down a rabbit hole of
| them. Just another example of how optimising for attention is a
| horrible idea.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Animals being eaten is not unethical. If anything killing
| strays and eating them is actually better since the animal is
| not just being killed for pest control. We westerners just like
| to think eating dogs is somehow evil when you look at the last
| hundred years because of war, it was way more common than you'd
| think. I personally wouldn't advocate eating them, but, there
| is absolutely nothing wrong with it.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I think eating an animal before you killed it is just a bit
| barbaric...
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| The Japanese do it with fish and other sea creatures...
| rewq4321 wrote:
| How could you possibly think that this makes it ethical?
| This is a troll-level comment, but somehow I think you're
| being earnest. _Please_ sit back and reflect on what you
| 're saying here. If it's because you don't think that
| animals can suffer, then read this: https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Animal_consciousness#Cambridge...
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| don't animals also feel pain when they're killed hours
| before being eaten? i mean i'm not advocating for eating
| live squid but i really can't see how the alternative is
| better for the squid.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| nationalgeographic.com is an obnoxious website. It will pop up a
| "give us your email address" overlay, which you can safely
| delete. You can resume reading the article by removing the style
| attribute that has been applied to the <body> tag.
| [deleted]
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Get BehindTheOverlay revival.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > which you can safely delete
|
| Sounds a lot less obnoxious than most.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Reader mode works wonders.
| beervirus wrote:
| > Enter your email address to continue reading
|
| Get fucked. Good thing reader view works.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| YouTube only ever recommends to me videos about debunking fake
| videos instead of the fake videos themselves. Does this mean I'm
| savvy?
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| No, but it likely leverages your ego/insecurity in thinking
| you're more savvy than the average person.
| [deleted]
| blondin wrote:
| i made it a rule to mark "not interested" any video "the dodo"
| puts out there. among many others. something just doesn't seem
| right with them as a whole.
|
| and yet youtube keeps recommending and encouraging these kind of
| channels.
| colanderman wrote:
| The Dodo is one of the few that feels legitimate to me. Most of
| their videos are just of animals that live with rehabilitators.
| I don't think I've seen any videos from them of animals in
| dangerous situations being "rescued". (If anyone knows anything
| to the contrary please share though.)
| h4l0 wrote:
| I agree with you. Most of their stories usually span a year
| or two, meaning that they cannot be fabricated. The Dodo is
| way more legitimate than anything discussed in the article.
| blondin wrote:
| legitimacy is not the issue. being legit doesn't make their
| videos right.
|
| "the dodo" has a video of an abused dog out there (that i am
| not going to link to) that has made countless of views since
| it came out and is still making views.
|
| replace dog with child and that video would have gotten taken
| down.
| rewq4321 wrote:
| You're arguing that abuse should be hidden? For many people
| (including myself), they first found out about terrible
| happenings in the world via YouTube videos, and besides
| this education being important for better understanding the
| world, it actually motivates them to do something about it.
|
| That said, if there is a possibility that the footage has
| been produced by intentionally harming an animal then it
| should obviously be taken down - and that's what the linked
| article is about.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'd argue that the success of The Dodo helps drive the
| success of the nastier copycats as people seek out or are
| recommended their content too.
| 65 wrote:
| Seems to me like YouTube doesn't really care if you press "not
| interested" next to a video.
|
| I keep explicitly telling Youtube that no, I am not interested
| in watching Shark Tank videos. And yet... they keep
| recommending them to me. The videos probably have very high
| engagement so it basically doesn't matter if I want to watch
| them or not, Youtube is going to keep pestering me until I
| click. I never click, but it's still annoying.
| assface wrote:
| Pig Rescues Baby Goat
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=g7WjrvG1GMk
| Wistar wrote:
| Okay, THAT would be hard to stage.
| psyklic wrote:
| "Nathan stages a viral video of a pig saving a drowning baby
| goat in order to make Oakland petting zoo an international
| destination." - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noTz20TB714
| DrewClacksila wrote:
| I immediately ctrl-f'd "nathan" after opening the comments.
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| This world is a never ending nightmare.
| habeebtc wrote:
| Youtube is a never ending nightmare.
| yadaeno wrote:
| Anything that relies on advertiser revenue and uses an
| algorithm to maximize revenue is a nightmare.
| ffggvv wrote:
| even if you don't rely on ads, having more views will
| always be desirable. netflix optimizes as much for playtime
| as youtube does because the more someone uses it, the less
| likely they'll cancel it.
|
| even "yellow journalism" newspapers in the past or tabloids
| are the same thing.
|
| and algorithms make it more possible at scale but aren't
| what's causing the issue either
| arglebarglegar wrote:
| it doesn't have to be, youtube doesn't need to publicize like
| and review counts, for example
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Yeah, it's frankly lead to me often thinking that were AI to
| take over and attempt to exterminate humanity I might be on
| their side.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| AI isn't needed. Between plagues, the effects of climate
| change, etc., Mother Nature has this covered.
| hfkktntnrfn wrote:
| I see on FB a different kind of fake animal rescue videos, with
| only a single animal - something like saving a cat stuck in wet
| concrete, or a dog who "fell" down a drain, videos with tens of
| millions of views. It's pretty obvious if you watch them that the
| person filming them put the animals in that situation in the
| first place.
| rewq4321 wrote:
| There is a very deep rabbit hole of this content, and the ones
| that are staged "well" can have millions of views, but if you
| click into the channel and go through their other content, you
| quickly see that they're pumping out these videos every few
| days - always with the same camera/resolution, the same
| voices/languages and rough geographic locations. Very clearly
| monetized animal torture.
|
| There are dozens of channels specifically based around
| torturing baby monkeys - either pretending to save it from a
| dog (after filming it being bitten and shaken in the dogs mouth
| for several minutes), or putting it through other forms of
| abuse under the guise of "looking after" it. There are
| people/groups trying to fight against this[0], but YouTube has
| ignored them for years.
|
| But it even gets worse than that - a second "revenue stream"
| for these people involves private facebook groups full of
| people who enjoy watching baby monkeys getting tortured and
| killed, and will pay people to have them record videos of
| it.[1][2][3]
|
| [0] Recent petition that I just found via Google, but there are
| many groups trying to bring attention to this:
| https://www.change.org/p/youtube-make-youtube-stop-all-anima...
|
| [1] https://www.ccn.com/youtube-has-a-vile-monkey-torture-
| commun...
|
| [2] NSFL:
| https://twitter.com/protect_wldlife/status/14243019790446141...
|
| [3] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14032495/youtube-baby-
| monkeys-...
| tommica wrote:
| Oh crap, I've not thought of that before... That is so obvious
| on hindsight, of course some people would do that >:(
| [deleted]
| Wistar wrote:
| My wife and I just came to this same realization. There's
| just too many of these polished rescue videos to be real.
| foxfired wrote:
| The medium is the message. When on YouTube, act like youtubers.
| It didn't start this way but as the platform has matured, content
| creators converged on what works.
|
| It's the same way you can tell a video is from tiktok even if the
| watermark is removed.
| h4l0 wrote:
| PaymoneyWubby made a video about this like 2 years ago
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mvVQCl8fIg . Nothing has changed
| since then. People will keep buying into this until platforms
| intervene.
| [deleted]
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| If I found an animal on the side of the road, I don't think the
| first thing I'd do is whip out my camera and record it. So these
| types of videos always seemed inherently fake to me
|
| But I'm not a big social media user, so maybe it's normal to
| immediately record anything out of the ordinary?
| TheCowboy wrote:
| It's actually the first thing I do because the chances of the
| lost pet allowing you to approach are usually not great. This
| gives me a better chance of getting a good shot or two I can
| post on Nextdoor.
| kfoley wrote:
| > so maybe it's normal to immediately record anything out of
| the ordinary?
|
| It does does seem to be fairly normal today. I once witnessed a
| woman struck by a car on a busy street. It was shocking to see
| how many people had their phones out and were filming the poor
| woman on the ground. There was thankfully some people trying to
| contact an ambulance and assist her.
|
| Likewise I'm always amazed how many videos there are on the
| news from kids in locked down classrooms during school
| shootings. It's a different situation obviously since they're
| filming their own suffering as opposed to someone else's but
| it's still surprising to me.
| jimjames88 wrote:
| Paywall
| ve55 wrote:
| I spent some time looking at Youtube reccommendations in fresh
| browser session (no cookies or account) yesterday and was
| contiually amazed by the types of videos that would often have
| 10M or even 100M views. The clickbait styles used by nearly all
| large channels have gotten so amazingly efficient that it seems
| like they near-perfectly pinpoint various biases and draws in our
| psyche now, and looking at the large categories of different
| genres of suggestions was an almost surreal experience in how
| similarly they targeted potential viewers. A lot of the content
| was obviously fake, and much of what was not obviously fake was
| significantly exaggerated for obvious reasons, with the method of
| exaggeration varying according to the genre of content.
|
| I spent a lot of time thinking about the platform as a whole
| after this, about all of the both wonderful and terrible changes
| it causes for our world. Some sections of YouTube are not just
| equivalent to television, but much worse and clearly actively
| harmful, but other sections are so amazing (educational content
| being one of the best examples imo) that it would be far too
| careless to dismiss the platform or its incentives as inherently
| bad.
|
| I suppose the best we could hope for is that we find some ways to
| improve the viral algorithms (and incentive structures that
| produce them) that control our Internet ecosystem over time,
| because there _are_ better ways to align incentives with the
| goals of humanity than we are currently doing, even if it is hard
| to get there. I often find that society actually _does_ really
| care about and improve on these issues, but the reason why it is
| often easier to be pessimistic is because the changes that we
| make in response often occur very slowly, often over the span of
| decades even.
| overcast wrote:
| YouTube allowing creators to change Title and Thumbnails as
| many times as they want after a video has been uploaded, and
| providing realtime analytics after a change is what is driving
| this. They basically are constantly optimizing, until they find
| what sticks. The crap you describe obviously does very well.
| Veritasium does a great video on this.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
| dv_dt wrote:
| Though one might also wonder if there is some source of
| artificial click views which could be employed by some
| channels.
| bsedlm wrote:
| > incentive structures
|
| this. I'm pretty sure current incentives from an era of
| capitalist (based on industrial manufacture) are just not good
| at software and digital goods in general.
|
| However, the exclusive ownership paradigm is so ingrained in
| our civilization that it'll take a long time for humanity to
| even properly consider other possibilities.
| akomtu wrote:
| It sounds like YouTube has become a petri dish (in a bad sense)
| for ideas. I wonder if at a high level, the growth and
| evolution of certain type of videos resembles fungi.
| pkulak wrote:
| Pretty good take on all this here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
| james-skemp wrote:
| Veritasium did a video about this recently, actually. I got the
| picture and didn't finish it, but it helped me realize how
| YouTube has pushed junk to me, despite trying to subscribe to
| quality channels.
|
| https://youtu.be/S2xHZPH5Sng
| asddubs wrote:
| i wish there was a crowdsourced browser addon like
| sponsorblock that just blocked any video with a thumbnail
| with a surprised face
| download13 wrote:
| Removing recommendation systems entirely, for now, would be a
| massive improvement, but that won't happen because none of us
| get input into that decision.
|
| The people who make it have only profit to consider, and the
| recommendation system gets them more profit.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| There is no way YouTube could work without a recommendation
| system. The volume is so huge you would get lost in the
| middle of videos of kids posting gameplay sessions for their
| friends.
|
| You can get good recommendation, but you have to let YouTube
| track you, if you are the kind with no account and block
| every tracker, you will get the stuff that is the most
| generic and gets the most clicks, because that's the default.
| It is good if you want to do a sociological study, but it is
| unlikely to match your tastes because the algorithm doesn't
| know your tastes.
|
| I guess that if you really don't like the YouTube
| recommendation system, you can add a few rules to your
| favorite ad blocker, the tag ids are not obfuscated.
| brundolf wrote:
| Not that it would ever make business sense, but ceasing click-
| based monetization in favor of Patreon-style monetization would
| do a pretty good job of getting rid of the bad stuff without
| getting rid of the good stuff. Most of the quality YouTubers I
| know of use Patreon already.
| ratww wrote:
| Yes, but I'd say that's true for everything on the web.
| Advertisement is like a reverse Midas touch. Everything
| relying on it is on a race to the bottom.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > Advertisement is like a reverse Midas touch. Everything
| relying on it is on a race to the bottom.
|
| Not necessarily though - I can think of plenty of partially
| ad-supported media and publications that have retained
| their reputation for quality for decades or even centuries,
| for example, _The Economist_ and the BBC World Service News
| channel.
|
| ...the thing is that the aforementioned don 't generally
| run mass-market ads: the kinds of ads you see in the
| Economist or in-between World Service news segments is
| stuff like Rolex watches, Credit Suisse, and Chase Private
| Client Banking.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| The two examples you chose, demonstrate the opposite of
| your point.
|
| One is a subscription service, meaning they aren't
| reliant on their advertising for most of the finances.
|
| The other is a quasi-govt entity, whose funding comes
| substantially from a tv license fee.
| ratww wrote:
| Yeah, those are the exceptions, though, and god knows how
| long they're gonna last. The effect of algorithmic
| advertisement and pay-per-impression/click is visible
| even on reputable newspapers: lots of them are resorting
| to clickbait because that's what generates pageviews.
| mey wrote:
| Are they the exception to the rule? It's not like The
| Economist is free.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I wonder what a Twitch-like model would look like if
| subscriptions were 10-25x lower (~$.40) so that you could
| support a handful of your favorite creators without breaking
| the bank. I bet a system like that would scale better
| globally.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| If a YouTuber uses Patreon only, does that mean they don't
| get checks? Or they just don't apply for the sweet free
| monies? (Or are their followings so small they don't
| qualify?)
| oakesm9 wrote:
| Some channels such as No Clip (games documentaries) run
| with no adverts and only make money through Patreon. They
| have almost 650k subscribers and 45.5 million views, so
| they're explicitly doing it to be ad-free.
| rewq4321 wrote:
| Except that this whole "fake animal rescue" industry is
| _deeply_ tied to the "paid animal torture" industry (which
| already has patreon-style facebook groups). It's the same
| people recording the videos - just two different types of
| content that they make. I provide links and some explanation
| here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28350858
| strulovich wrote:
| I think the idea that subscription based monetization would
| turn out better is wishful thinking. What will prevent people
| from making channels of this horrible videos and get paying
| customers? Or what makes you think people will pay for
| educational videos more?
|
| People subscribe to reality TV channels and plenty of guilty
| pleasures. OnlyFans is booming and so forth.
|
| You may be correct, but I would love to see anything besides
| our wishful thinking that this would necessarily breed better
| content.
| brundolf wrote:
| Continuing our rapid descent into the strangest and most
| mundanely-evil dystopia.
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