How Cute Cats Help Spread False Information on the Internet

New Tang Dynasty Television, a station affiliated with the Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, posted on Facebook a video of a woman rescuing a stranded baby shark on October 2. Next to the video was a link to subscribe Epoch Times, a newspaper affiliated with Falun Gong that spreads anti-Chinese and right-wing conspiracies. The post garnered 33,000 likes, comments and shares.

website Joseph MercolaAn osteopathic doctor that researchers say is the major spreader of coronavirus misinformation online regularly posts on Facebook about cute animals that generate tens or even hundreds of thousands of interactions. Among the stories is a veterinarian, Dr. Includes “Kitten and Chicken Nap So Sweet Together” and “Why Orange Cats Can Be Different From Other Cats” by Karen Becker.

And the Western Journal, a right-wing publication that publishes unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of using hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 in the 2020 presidential election and spread fraudulent lies in the 2020 presidential election, owns a popular Facebook page, Liftable Animals. Removable Animals publishes stories about Golden Retrievers and giraffes, as well as stories from the Western Journal’s main website.

Videos and GIFs of cute animals – usually cats – have gone viral on the internet for as long as the internet has existed. Many of the animals have become famous: Keyboard Cat, Grumpy Cat, Lil Bub, and Nyan Cat, just to name a few.

According to misinformation researchers, it is now becoming increasingly clear how widely the old-fashioned internet deception is used by individuals and organizations who are marketing misinformation online.

Sharing with animals does not directly spread false information. But they can attract a huge audience that could be redirected to a post or site that spreads misinformation about election fraud, unproven coronavirus treatments, and other baseless conspiracy theories that have nothing to do with the videos. Sometimes, following a cute pet feed on Facebook unknowingly registers users as subscribing to misleading posts from the same publisher.

Melissa Ryan, CEO of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that does research on disinformation, said this type of “interaction trap” helps misinformation actors generate clicks on their pages, which could make them more prominent in users’ feeds in the future. This prominence could lead a wider audience to content that contains false or misleading information, he said.

“Even if that engagement comes from posts that post false or misleading content,” Ryan said, “it works because platforms continue to reward engagement more than anything else.”

Perhaps no organization employs this tactic as vigorously as Epoch Media, the parent company of The Epoch Times. Epoch Media posted cute animal videos in 12,062 posts on 103 Facebook pages last year, according to an analysis by The New York Times. These posts, which contain links to other Epoch Media websites, have been viewed nearly four billion times. Trending World, one of Epoch’s Facebook pages, was the 15th most popular page on the platform in the United States between July and September.

In a video published last month by The Epoch Times’ Taiwan page, a woman shows a close-up of a golden retriever as she vainly tries to lift an apple from her mouth. finished 20,000 likes, shares and comments on Facebook. Another post on Trending World’s Facebook page features a widely grinning seal with a family posing for a family at the Sea World resort. NS video has 12 million views.

Epoch Media did not respond to a request for comment.

“Dr. Becker is a veterinarian, his articles are about pets,” he said. “We reject the New York Times accusations of misleading any visitor, but we are not surprised.”

Viral animal videos usually come from places like: Jukin Media and ViralHog. Companies identify highly shareable videos and enter into license agreements with the people who make them. After securing the rights to the videos, Jukin Media and ViralHog license the clips to other media companies, giving the original creator a share of the profits.

Mike Skogmo, Jukin Media’s senior vice president of marketing and communications, said that his company has entered into a license agreement with Falun Gong’s affiliated station, New Tang Dynasty Television.

“Jukin has licensing agreements with hundreds of publishers across the political spectrum and on various topics around the world, under guidelines that protect the creators of the works in our library,” he said.

When asked if the company’s clips were used as interaction bait for misinformation while breaking license agreements, Mr. Skogmo said that Jukin had nothing more to add.

“Once someone licenses our raw content, it depends on what they do with it,” said Ryan Bartholomew, founder of ViralHog. “ViralHog does not support or oppose any cause or cause that would be outside of our line of business.”

The use of animal videos is a conundrum for tech platforms like Facebook, because the animal posts themselves do not contain false information. Facebook bans ads from Epoch Media while on the network violated political advertising policy, and shut down several hundred Epoch Media affiliated accounts last year when it determines that accounts violate “coordinated inauthentic behavior” policies.

“We have already taken enforcement actions against Epoch Media and related groups several times,” said Drew Pusateri, a Facebook spokesperson. “If we discover that they have engaged in deceptive acts in the future, we will continue to take enforcement action against them.” The company did not comment on its tactic of using cute animals to spread misinformation.

Rachel E. Moran, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online misinformation, said it’s unclear how often animal videos mislead people. But posting them remains a popular tactic because the risk of breaking a platform’s rules is very low.

“Pictures of cute animals and videos of healthy moments are social media’s breadbasket and will certainly not be affected by any algorithmic content moderation detection,” said Ms. Moran.

“People still use it every day,” he said.

Jacob Silver contributed to research.