Animal welfare
Updated: June 21, 2024
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What is animal abuse?
As outlined in our Community Guidelines, we do not allow animal abuse, cruelty, neglect, or other forms of animal exploitation and remove content that causes distress or harm to animals.
Animal abuse involves inflicting physical or psychological injury or harm to an animal. This includes the use of force against animals that can cause physical injuries, denying an animal basic food, water, sanitary, or medical needs, harming or causing distress to an animal for entertainment, and subjecting animals to cruel or inhumane practices.
How to identify animal abuse
Here are some indicators of animal abuse that you should be aware of (non-exhaustive):
Being aggressive or violent towards an animal
Shouting and subjecting an animal to constant auditory distress
Inappropriate feeding of animals
Animals are trained or forced to attack each other
Filthy sanitary conditions impacting the animals' health and well-being
Absence of proper medical care when there's evidence of injury
Learn more about identifying animal abuse from our Safety Partners:
How to support animal welfare
TikTok is committed to maintaining a supportive environment, including providing a space for pet owners and animal lovers to share and enjoy animal-related content. If you spot an instance of animal abuse on TikTok’s platform, we encourage you to report it by long pressing on the content, clicking 'Report' and selecting 'Violence, abuse, and criminal exploitation', then 'animal abuse'.
The search tool below can help connect you to local organizations in your region to learn more about how to prevent animal abuse.
Learn more
- If you are a pet owner, be responsible and kind. Make arrangements for your pet’s care before leaving them alone. Also, go beyond the basic needs of your pets by providing them with positive experiences to enhance their well-being.
- Teach children to respect animals. Set a good example by treating animals with love and consideration, sharing how to interact with them properly, and encouraging them to become animal welfare advocates when they grow up.
- Consider helping people who are overwhelmed with caring for their animals. Animal neglect can happen for various reasons. For example, an owner may not have the psychological or monetary resources to provide an animal with the appropriate care. Your assistance can make a difference in helping the pet receive the care it needs, and by helping the pet, you may also be helping another human.
- Donate financially or volunteer your time to humane animal shelters and organizations to support their vital work.
- Create and share your animal content responsibly. Spreading joy should not come at the expense of these animals. For example, provoking or setting up animals to film their distressed reactions can be harmful to them. Allow these animals to be in their natural state.
- Consider sharing non-graphic educational content that raises awareness about animal abuse and welfare in an appropriate manner. Doing so raises awareness of the importance of intervening when animals are neglected or tormented.
Disclaimer
This guide serves to provide information for user education. We do not profit from providing such information, nor is the information directly produced as a result of cooperation or association with the listed external organisations.