Dog fighting is termed as animal cruelty in many parts of the world. Due to this, it’s illegal. Facebook is now under new criticism for not doing enough to ban the practice across its platforms.

 

An animal rights organisation reports on how users can easily find dog fighting content on the platform. They believe that Facebook fails to enforce its policies against the practice.

 

The organisation, called Lady Freethinker, revealed that about 2,000 posts promoted dogfighting or animal trafficked for fighting. These posts were said to have been published between October 2018 and February 2019.

 

 

 

They made over 150 pages of groups and profiles that actively use Facebook to propagate these practices. The top five pages and groups also had an average of 160,563 members.

 

The organisation reported 26 of these posts to Facebook for policy violation. The company subsequently removed 20 of them from the platform. They added that they found these posts using common keywords associated with dogfighting.

 

The report stated,

“Facebook has become ground zero for discussing the merits of particular dogs and breeders, often on closed forums. Many of the pages and groups use coded terminology the average reader might not understand.”

 

The founder of the organisation, Nina Jackel, in a media report said,

“Facebook is often used as a platform for advocacy to effect positive change. But as our report shows, it is failing to protect innocent animals from abuse and possible death. By not enforcing its own policies against animal cruelty, Facebook is complicit in perpetuating criminal acts against dogs.”

 

Facebook, in response to this, assured that they did not allow content depicting and promoting staged animal fights on the platform.

 

 

A spokesperson from the tech giant company also said,

“We’re grateful to Lady Freethinker for bringing these posts to our attention and we have contacted them so we can get the information we need to investigate this content. If people see something on Facebook they think breaks our Community Standards, we encourage them to report it using the tools on our platform so our teams can investigate and take action.”

 

This is a very active warning to those that post ram fights on Facebook even as Sallah approaches. These contents are illegal on Facebook. Also, Facebook could flag them. Consequently, it could lead to the temporary or even permanent removal of your Facebook page.