A pet advocacy nonprofit has sued YouTube over videos depicting small animals being strangled and swallowed by a snake.
Lady Freethinker filed the complaint in Santa Clara Superior Court last week alleging that YouTube is prioritizing profits over efforts to remove the illegal content.
“Ball pythons generally have 25 to 35 sharp barb-like teeth facing inward, lethally designed to sink deeper into the snake’s victim as it struggles to break free,” wrote Lady Freethinker’s attorney Bruce Wagman in the Oct. 18 complaint. “The more the victim fights for its life, the deeper the barbs go, with every movement toward freedom paradoxically working to seal its fate. At the same time, the snake coils around the small animal tightening and tightening until the unwitting prey’s death. Only thereafter does the python begin to ingest the animal.”
The plaintiff seeks an order requiring YouTube to remove all animal abuse videos from the platform and allowing Lady Freethinker to be part of Google d/b/a YouTube’s Trusted Flagger program so that it can assist in the removal of the content.
The Trusted Flagger program supposedly would allow experts outside of YouTube to monitor and remove offensive content.
“For some reason, YouTube is not willing to stand by their policies,” Wagman told the Southern California Record. “They have less concern about animal abuse than other issues because they are very quick to remove a lot of content and they're very good at removing content as well but these animal abuse videos are not being pulled down despite our attempts to have them do it without having to file a lawsuit.”
When Lady Freethinker approached YouTube about removing the videos and allowing Lady Freethinker to become a flagger, the organization was allegedly rejected and told by YouTube that they are doing their best.
"They have taken down some videos and that's proof that they are able, which is no credit to them," Wagman said. "Why they're not removing the videos the way they should is beyond me and that's why Lady Freethinker finally decided they needed to file a lawsuit."
The producers of the python attack videos posted on YouTube have evaded detection so far, according to Wagman.
“I don't know that we've ever identified individual persons who are producing these videos but the first set came out of Dubai and recent ones are coming out of Indonesia and many Americans are watching these videos,” Wagman said. “This has to do with some very depraved individuals. We don't think that it's only people from other countries. It's just that the production itself seems to be in another country.”
The complaint includes five causes of action including breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and violations of California’s False Advertising Law.
"Lady Freethinker has a YouTube channel and when you get a YouTube channel, you enter into what amounts to a contract between you, the channel owner, and YouTube," Wagman added. "So, the contract they've breached with my client includes the promise that you are posting on a site that is free of animal cruelty, and that you will remove animal cruelty whenever you see it. That's the contract YouTube has breached."
Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokesperson, told the Southern California Record that it agrees content depicting violence or abuse toward animals has no place on its platform.
"While we’ve always had strict policies prohibiting animal abuse content, earlier this year, we expanded our violent and graphic policy to more clearly prohibit content featuring deliberate physical suffering or harm to animals, including staged animal rescues," Choi said.
"As with any significant update, it takes time for our systems to fully ramp up enforcement. Our teams are working hard to quickly remove violative content and just this year alone, we’ve removed hundreds of thousands of videos and terminated thousands of channels for violating these policies."