Facebook: Sociopath Networking?

by Stephanie Feldstein · 2010-02-09 19:30:00 UTC
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On Facebook, you can find your high school exes, fan pages for your favorite TV shows, and groups where you can share your favorite ways to skin animals.

Despite the site's terms that prohibit users from posting "content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence," content slips through the cracks. It's one of the risks of the internet and free speech in general: When you allow people to post whatever they want, you're going to get more than sunshine and kittens. You may get dead kittens.

I'm all for free speech, and I know that not everyone loves animals, but there's a difference between saying you hate cats, for instance, and sharing photos and videos of tortured and mutilated animals like the Dead Cats Anyone?? Facebook group.

Animal abuse online isn't new. Some instances are real, some are hoaxes (like Bonsaikitten.com, which offered kittens in glass jars, or puppyprofits.com, a satire on dog fighting as an easy and fun way to make money). The former is evidence of a crime, the latter is guilty of criminally bad taste. To the website visitor, there's very little difference. If you're sane, you find these sites extremely disturbing. If you relate to these sites, you may be a sociopath on your way to a life of violence toward animals and people. It's a lose-lose situation.

The ASPCA has a list of resources on how to identify and report online cruelty. On Facebook, where animal abuse groups are violating the terms of the site, they should be immediately reported so the administrators know they exist and can remove them. Thanks to self-appointed watchdog groups like Cat's Cause: Speak for Those Who Can't Speak for Themselves, at least one online hangout for cat abusers doesn't exist anymore.

Unfortunately, new ones are cropping up all the time — groups and websites that glorify the myriad of sick and twisted ways that people can be cruel to animals. Be a good netizen and report them.

Photo credit: *yasuhiro

Stephanie Feldstein is a Change.org Editor who has been part of the animal welfare and rescue community for over a decade, and most recently worked for an environmental organization.

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