Fake animal rescue videos have become a new frontier for animal abuse(nationalgeographic.com)
nationalgeographic.com
Fake animal rescue videos have become a new frontier for animal abuse
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/how-fake-animal-rescue-videos-have-become-a-new-frontier-for-animal-abuse
91 comments
I keep getting recommended animal rescue videos of The Dodo and something about them always rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's the emotional music or maybe it's the fact that they're making money off animal suffering, even if it always ends with a feel good happy ending.
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]
Get BehindTheOverlay revival.
> which you can safely delete
Sounds a lot less obnoxious than most.
Sounds a lot less obnoxious than most.
Reader mode works wonders.
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.
and yet youtube keeps recommending and encouraging these kind of channels.
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.)
Not animals being attacked by other animals as described in the article, but there are loads of the sort of voyeuristic rescue videos on The Dodo:
https://youtu.be/LhBqq8kfjVc
https://youtu.be/2KqrLDj9K_Q
https://youtu.be/7ioXKtON5Ws
https://youtu.be/NzOIafUhatU
https://youtu.be/SRm3bpYO-fk
https://youtu.be/NVe6fC4Af-w
https://youtu.be/rr1x_XgA354
https://youtu.be/LhBqq8kfjVc
https://youtu.be/2KqrLDj9K_Q
https://youtu.be/7ioXKtON5Ws
https://youtu.be/NzOIafUhatU
https://youtu.be/SRm3bpYO-fk
https://youtu.be/NVe6fC4Af-w
https://youtu.be/rr1x_XgA354
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This world is a never ending nightmare.
Youtube is a never ending nightmare.
Anything that relies on advertiser revenue and uses an algorithm to maximize revenue is a nightmare.
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
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
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.
AI isn't needed. Between plagues, the effects of climate change, etc., Mother Nature has this covered.
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.
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-...
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-...
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.
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?
But I’m not a big social media user, so maybe it’s normal to immediately record anything out of the ordinary?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The people who make it have only profit to consider, and the recommendation system gets them more profit.
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.
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.
> There is no way YouTube could work without a recommendation system.
This doesn't make any sense. The recommendation system that exists right now will only tell you to keep watching more of things you already watch. YouTube already works without a recommendation system. Recommendations by YouTube are the source of... very little that I watch there. You watch things because you already know what you want and search for it, or because you got a recommendation from something other than the YouTube recommendations.
This doesn't make any sense. The recommendation system that exists right now will only tell you to keep watching more of things you already watch. YouTube already works without a recommendation system. Recommendations by YouTube are the source of... very little that I watch there. You watch things because you already know what you want and search for it, or because you got a recommendation from something other than the YouTube recommendations.
Recommendations are recommendations, whether it comes from YouTube of from outside of YouTube. Separating the host and recommendation engine has pros and cons, that are mostly both sides of the same coin.
You are getting more of what you are interested in, but you get even less diversity. You are less likely to binge watch useless stuff, but it makes it harder to get more content about the topic you are interested in. Less platform independence, but worse integration.
Things become even more complex when you consider monetization. Obviously, YouTube does that for money, but more money for YouTube also means more money for creators. And if you begin to take into account alternative revenue streams (Patreon, sponsors, ...), you get even more tradeoffs. In any case, YouTube needs money, and it is not that profitable (I think it started at a loss).
As for searching, search is recommendation, unless you know the exact title of your video. For example, if you are looking for "how to install a graphics card", YouTube (or Google, or Bing) will make a small selection of the thousands of videos on the subject.
You are getting more of what you are interested in, but you get even less diversity. You are less likely to binge watch useless stuff, but it makes it harder to get more content about the topic you are interested in. Less platform independence, but worse integration.
Things become even more complex when you consider monetization. Obviously, YouTube does that for money, but more money for YouTube also means more money for creators. And if you begin to take into account alternative revenue streams (Patreon, sponsors, ...), you get even more tradeoffs. In any case, YouTube needs money, and it is not that profitable (I think it started at a loss).
As for searching, search is recommendation, unless you know the exact title of your video. For example, if you are looking for "how to install a graphics card", YouTube (or Google, or Bing) will make a small selection of the thousands of videos on the subject.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Are they the exception to the rule? It's not like The Economist is free.
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.
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.
The BBC as a whole, yes - but “BBC Worldwide”: the arm that runs the World Service channel and foreign broadcasting is self-sufficient and does run ads. Though I’m unsure how the accounting works for profits it gets for programs it licenses out when they’re made by the BBC’s domestically funded divisions.
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?)
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Though one might also wonder if there is some source of artificial click views which could be employed by some channels.
> 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.
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.
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.
Pretty good take on all this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
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
https://youtu.be/S2xHZPH5Sng
i wish there was a crowdsourced browser addon like sponsorblock that just blocked any video with a thumbnail with a surprised face
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
People said TV was bad, let's move on YT. It got popular. Now, YT is bad. I am now starting to think People are bad.
People are good and bad at different times and from different perspectives. So in a way, you're right, if badness is what you're focused on.
Badness is what's on frontpage of YT with millions of views, so, yes, I am focused on badness of humans. Regarding perspectives - that's an interesting point. What if I am the one with poor taste?
My intended meaning was more that the people who make some annoying YT clickbait may be forces of good from the perspective of their families which they support, businesses they promote, old ladies they help across the street if and when they do so, and so on. If your taste is poor for thinking YT is promoting badness, then mine would be poor, too.
I'm wondering how long this will remain efficient, though. I'm now at the point where I just flat out refuse to click on any video with a clickbait title, or any video that is exactly 10 minutes long (give or take a few seconds). I can't be the only one.
It’s been clear for a long time now that the Internet connects not our abstract and reasoning brain but our primal brain. The fact that it was ever considered this utopian grid is laughable because it’s just catalyzing reversion.
> 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 think when you see one of these obviously-fake video thumbnails and think to yourself "who in their right mind would click on that?" the answer is usually: children. Millions and millions of children.
I think when you see one of these obviously-fake video thumbnails and think to yourself "who in their right mind would click on that?" the answer is usually: children. Millions and millions of children.
Continuing our rapid descent into the strangest and most mundanely-evil dystopia.
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.
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.
I think eating an animal before you killed it is just a bit barbaric…
The Japanese do it with fish and other sea creatures...
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...
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.
You are absolutely right that both are terrible. That said, being eaten alive is undoubtably a slower, more painful death in most cases. Both are unnecessary - plant-based diets can prevent a lot of suffering.
I am aware of and do think animals can suffer. Ethically you should kill them before eating them. What I'm saying is the Japanese do it with fish and other sea creatures but yet that must mame it okay cause it's just fish or lobster.
But at the end of the day it really does not matter. If youve been desensitized to it in your life as a nonwesterner, who are we to demand they change their culture?
But at the end of the day it really does not matter. If youve been desensitized to it in your life as a nonwesterner, who are we to demand they change their culture?
You're addressing a theoretical person who is OK with eating sea life alive, but not with eating land life alive. Clearly those people exist, but I don't see why you're assuming that's the context here.
> What I'm saying is the Japanese do it with fish and other sea creatures but yet that must mame it okay cause it's just fish or lobster.
I don't know why you're assuming that sea creatures don't suffer. There may be a miscommunication here.
> who are we to demand they change their culture
Would you apply the same reasoning to a culture that practices human sacrifice, for example? Or that enslaves humans? The "it's their (personal) choice" argument breaks down when you realise that the preferences/interests of the victims matter too. Their suffering matters.
I don't know why you're assuming that sea creatures don't suffer. There may be a miscommunication here.
> who are we to demand they change their culture
Would you apply the same reasoning to a culture that practices human sacrifice, for example? Or that enslaves humans? The "it's their (personal) choice" argument breaks down when you realise that the preferences/interests of the victims matter too. Their suffering matters.
Western civilization is not the barometer for world ideology simply because we ourselves feel enlightened. That in of itself is bigotry to the maximum degree simply because you deem our culture superior to others simply because we've moved past these customs. At one point, we did the same. Who are we to step in the way of other cultures making the same progression? Because we're just impatient and want to speed up their growth?
Either one of two scenarios exist, we either deem particular cultures invalid (thusly also deeming traditional customs, religion, and experiences as invalid), or we coexist with things we do not like. Either way someone will suffer. But god forbid a westerner be told their ways are bad...
Either one of two scenarios exist, we either deem particular cultures invalid (thusly also deeming traditional customs, religion, and experiences as invalid), or we coexist with things we do not like. Either way someone will suffer. But god forbid a westerner be told their ways are bad...
I don't think you actually believe the words that you're typing. Does your "let them be" policy only apply between countries? What about if a particularly insular community within a country is torturing a particular minority group within that community? Let them take their time to learn the lessons that the others have, you say? Or do you have a special escape hatch in your "let them be" rule for when no national borders are crossed?
You don't seem to care at all about the victims. If we believe that there is a high probability that a particular country is causing a lot of unnecessary suffering, and we're quite sure we can decrease that amount of suffering with few negative externalities, then to not do so would be violating our own ethical systems - you're effectively arguing that your own ethical system is broken, or has a very special case where it doesn't apply (i.e. whenever an international border is involved). We can argue about how effective these international efforts would be, or have historically been, but that's it's own debate.
Do you think it'd have been wrong to donate to charities which help the Rohingya during the recent genocide of their people? I guess not, because we'd be interfering with another country and that is "bigotry to the maximum degree"? What about for the Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide?
As unfashionable as it is to say, some cultures absolutely are better than others along certain dimensions, and part of an existence in a global/international community is learning from one another, just like individual humans learn from one another in local communities. This is the only reason we talk about improving aspects of our culture in the first place - it's why we discuss things like rape culture, toxic masculinity, women's rights, racism, and so on. Cultures can become different and better.
I think you're imagining some sort of violent military invasion to stop Japanese people eating sea creatures alive, but no one is suggesting anything of that sort.
It's tempting to think in simple extremes like "Countries should never interfere with the affairs of other countries," but effective policies in our messy reality are rarely so simple. If you need help seeing that, try to imagine a really extreme case, like multiplying the suffering during the WW2 Jewish genocide by 1000x, or something like that. Would you interfere? Or just let it play out so they can learn their own lessons?
You don't seem to care at all about the victims. If we believe that there is a high probability that a particular country is causing a lot of unnecessary suffering, and we're quite sure we can decrease that amount of suffering with few negative externalities, then to not do so would be violating our own ethical systems - you're effectively arguing that your own ethical system is broken, or has a very special case where it doesn't apply (i.e. whenever an international border is involved). We can argue about how effective these international efforts would be, or have historically been, but that's it's own debate.
Do you think it'd have been wrong to donate to charities which help the Rohingya during the recent genocide of their people? I guess not, because we'd be interfering with another country and that is "bigotry to the maximum degree"? What about for the Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide?
As unfashionable as it is to say, some cultures absolutely are better than others along certain dimensions, and part of an existence in a global/international community is learning from one another, just like individual humans learn from one another in local communities. This is the only reason we talk about improving aspects of our culture in the first place - it's why we discuss things like rape culture, toxic masculinity, women's rights, racism, and so on. Cultures can become different and better.
I think you're imagining some sort of violent military invasion to stop Japanese people eating sea creatures alive, but no one is suggesting anything of that sort.
It's tempting to think in simple extremes like "Countries should never interfere with the affairs of other countries," but effective policies in our messy reality are rarely so simple. If you need help seeing that, try to imagine a really extreme case, like multiplying the suffering during the WW2 Jewish genocide by 1000x, or something like that. Would you interfere? Or just let it play out so they can learn their own lessons?
By your logic, Western ethics are superior to all others, Islam and Jainism should be a banned religions, we should be an entirely heterogeneous cultures mixing with one another with zero cohesion, and that the evolutionary means of mankind on an industrial scale is not prone to survival of the fittest because we're no longer the same animals we were 100k years ago.
I love how you're painting me as some sort of pro genocide person simply because I imply that events in motion are something we shouldn't stop just because we believe we're morally superior. Mind your own damn business for once. We're not the fucking world police. Western ideology is not a religion we're supposed to impose on others. Islam is as fucking barbaric as religion gets on a grand scale yet evolutionary the religion has made people successful. So who the hell are we to tell people they can't participate? What cause we have a higher sense of value on the human being? Human life is not valuable just because you have consciousness. You're another blip on the unknown radar that can easily be gone in a moments notice. Everybody every day lives a dice roll of luck and opportunity. Every now and then people lose. Thinking we hold the keys to moral superiority is not going to change that. Is a life as a slave for a shitty lord somehow better than death by genocide? I don't think so. Yet here we are, in areas of the middle east where this is common.
I love how you're painting me as some sort of pro genocide person simply because I imply that events in motion are something we shouldn't stop just because we believe we're morally superior. Mind your own damn business for once. We're not the fucking world police. Western ideology is not a religion we're supposed to impose on others. Islam is as fucking barbaric as religion gets on a grand scale yet evolutionary the religion has made people successful. So who the hell are we to tell people they can't participate? What cause we have a higher sense of value on the human being? Human life is not valuable just because you have consciousness. You're another blip on the unknown radar that can easily be gone in a moments notice. Everybody every day lives a dice roll of luck and opportunity. Every now and then people lose. Thinking we hold the keys to moral superiority is not going to change that. Is a life as a slave for a shitty lord somehow better than death by genocide? I don't think so. Yet here we are, in areas of the middle east where this is common.
YouTube only ever recommends to me videos about debunking fake videos instead of the fake videos themselves. Does this mean I'm savvy?
No, but it likely leverages your ego/insecurity in thinking you're more savvy than the average person.
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Pig Rescues Baby Goat
https://youtube.com/watch?v=g7WjrvG1GMk
https://youtube.com/watch?v=g7WjrvG1GMk
Okay, THAT would be hard to stage.
"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
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Okay, THAT would be easy to stage.
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.
It's the same way you can tell a video is from tiktok even if the watermark is removed.
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