Scottish SPCA demand a ban on animal cruelty videos in new online safety laws

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The Scottish SPCA is demanding that videos featuring animal cruelty are included in the UK Government’s new legislation to protect children from online dangers.

The charity has received hundreds of calls from concerned parents, whose kids have viewed disturbing material, including small animals being stamped to death by women in stiletto heels.As a result of lobbying by the SSPCA and the RSPCA, an amendment to the Online Safety Bill, incorporating animal abuse, began it’s committee journey in the House of Lords yesterday.Gilly Mendes Ferreira, the SSPCA’s director of innovation and strategic relations, said: “We have been made aware of some horrendous content that is out there and potentially causing harm for children.“This bill offers the ideal opportunity to start looking at how we can stop images of animal abuse being put on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Tik Tok, with no comebacks.

We’re delighted that an amendment has been proposed that refers to animals.”Mendes Ferreira said she wants to see more onus switched from parents to providers of these different platforms.

She said some of the extreme material witnessed by the SSPCA’s special investigations unit includes “crush” videos - where women stamped amnimals to death in high heels, for the sexual gratification of perverts.She said: “There’s a lot of reliance at the moment on parental controls but children do end up seeing some terrible stuff, including sexual material.