We are deeply appalled and disturbed that YouTube is increasingly hosting channels that depict cruelty toward animals, including endangered species and sentient sea creatures; merely for the sake of views, profit, and entertainment.
These videos are not educational, cultural, or survivalist. And they usually involve scripted acts of violence such as:

• Hunting endangered animals
• Butchering and mutilating conscious creatures
• Boiling or slicing apart live lobsters, crabs, and octopuses, despite scientific evidence that they are sentient beings capable of feeling and emotions.

These videos rack up millions of views, are monetized, and continue to circulate unchecked. Channels profiting from this suffering are becoming more popular, further normalizing animal abuse on the world’s largest video platform.

The Science
In 2021, a UK government-commissioned report concluded that crustaceans and cephalopods (like lobsters, crabs, and octopuses) are sentient. They feel pain, fear, stress, and suffering just as much as we do. Yet their sufferings are executed as a game. Hundreds of videos exist in which these beings are cooked alive, dismembered, or tortured for entertainment.
This is not just unethical, but inhumane as well. It desensitizing public to the crimes against wildlife, and violates animal protection laws in many countries.

Our Demands to YouTube

We call on YouTube to immediately:

1. Add “Animal Cruelty” as a specific report category
2. Ban and demonetize channels that promote the hunting or killing of wildlife; Mutilating or slaughtering of sentient creatures; and showcase such suffering for entertainment
3. Permanently remove channels that repeatedly violate these rules
4. Collaborate with animal welfare experts, biologists, and ethics boards to define clear guidelines for what constitutes cruelty or abuse
5. Ensure no animal-abuse content is monetized under any circumstance

Why it Matters?

YouTube’s current policy framework is insufficient to address this rising form of digital cruelty. YouTube only allows us to report such videos under ‘abuse or violence category’. Infact it’s much more than that. It is a crime against our planet. When such videos depicting animal cruelty go viral, they are:

• Incentivising cruelty through revenue and fame
• Violate wildlife and animal protection laws
• Expose children and global audiences to violence disguised as cooking or adventure
• Threaten critically endangered species through glorified hunting content

YouTube, a global platform, must take responsibility for the harm it enables. 

We Demand

• A clear public policy against animal cruelty
• A zero-tolerance approach to monetized animal torture
• The immediate banning of channels violating ethical treatment norms
• The addition of an Animal Cruelty report category for public use

We Shall Not Be Silent.🚫
Animals cannot speak. Hence we shall! For the sake of Mother Earth! For the Biodiversity! To Protect our Future and Earth!

The time to act is now. YouTube must stop promoting and monetizing animal suffering. If the platform does not change, it becomes complicit in this cruelty.

🖊️ Kindly Sign this petition to demand justice and protection for the voiceless.✒️