Bestiality videos found on Twitter, depicting humans sexually abusing animals, have been removed by the platform after pressure from animal protection advocates the ‘Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition’ (SMACC), a network of 11 animal protection organizations who aim to end animal cruelty online.
In August, eight accounts were identified by SMACC sharing bestiality content. These videos featured primarily dogs, horses, and pigs being sexually abused by humans. All were freely available to watch on Twitter with no warning on the videos of any kind.
Twitter’s own reporting tool was used by SMACC to flag the offending accounts with the platform. Initially, the coalition received a response from Twitter regarding two of the accounts, stating they did not breach Twitter policy:
“After reviewing the available information, we want to let you know [account name] hasn’t broken our safety policies.”
In response, SMACC, as part of the Asia for Animals Coalition, sent a joint appeal letter to the platform, directed at a range of key personnel including the CEO Parag Agrawal. The appeal letter was signed by 154 organizations. So far, Twitter has failed to respond directly to the coalition but has now removed the offending accounts.
SMACC has since located more accounts and tweets on the platform which promote bestiality.