Fake online animal rescues

As a person on the internet that likes animals and gets a lot of animal videos in my fyp I've started to notice a trend. Fake animal rescue accounts. Accounts that steal other rescues/peoples videos and content and parade around as a nonprofit animal rescue. I haven't seen a lot of people talk about this (incredibly important subject) yet. Probably because no one wants to point fingers so let me list off some warning signs

• Posting the same videos Most of these fake animal rescues post the same videos usually with different captions multiple times over. These videos are usually pretty graphic for the shock value. Taken from actual rescues accounts

• Using those clickbait titles we've all seen "You watched this whole video so we could save her life" "if everyone likes this video we can afford her care" "POV: you stayed for 20s so we could save her life" "please like and follow so we can treat her cancer"

• Posting videos with completely different animals and no follow ups Usually these accounts will pick random videos from other people to post. This means that the same animal doesnt appear more than once in their posts. Rescues usually have fan favorites and stories from specific rescues they like to keep their followers up on. Another warning sign for this category is that in addition to the animals being different the facilities shown in their videos also do not match at all.

• posting only reels (instagram) Especially coupled with those baity titles this is a HUGE warning sign. Genuine rescues usually also make regular posts.

• people behind the rescue are never shown This is another symptom of stealing videos. Usually genuine rescues like to show the behind the scenes of the whole process.

EXAMPLE: safe_hooves_haven on instagram. Their first post was made in August of this year and they've been posting stolen videos from Colby's Crew Rescue and others.

So what can you do:

Report the accounts

Never EVER donate money to a random rescue you find on social media. Always atleast attempt to find additional info on them through google before you donate. Genuine rescues usually have atleast a website of their own