Data from: The viewer doesn’t always seem to care - response to fake animal rescues on YouTube and implications for social media self-policing policies

Animal-related content on social media is hugely popular but is not always
appropriate in terms of how animals are portrayed or how they are treated.
This has potential implications beyond the individual animals involved,
for viewers, for wild animal populations, and for societies and their
interactions with animals. Whilst social media platforms usually publish
guidelines for permitted content, enforcement relies at least in part on
viewers reporting inappropriate posts. Currently, there is no external
regulation of social media platforms. Based on a set of 241 "fake
animal rescue" videos that exhibited clear signs of animal cruelty
and strong evidence of being deliberately staged (i.e. fake), we found
little evidence that viewers disliked the videos and an overall mixed
response in terms of awareness of the fake nature of the videos, and their
attitudes towards the welfare of the animals involved. Our findings
suggest, firstly, that despite the narrowly defined nature of the videos
used in this case study, exposure rates can be extremely high (one of the
videos had been viewed over 100 million times), and, secondly, that many
YouTube viewers cannot identify (or are not concerned by) animal welfare
or conservation issues within a social media context. In terms of the
current policy approach of social media platforms, our findings raise
questions regarding the value of their current reliance on consumers as
watch dogs.