Vienna, 26 August 2024 – Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Meta, have become hotspots for unethical puppy sellers across Europe – according to an investigation by global animal welfare organisation FOUR PAWS. Cruel sellers manage to bypass Meta’s policies, country and EU regulations on puppy sales – seemingly without facing consequences for their trades. FOUR PAWS urges an immediate suspension of dog sale promotions on Meta-owned social media platforms until the trade is properly monitored, controlled, and regulated to stop the suffering of puppies across Europe.

FOUR PAWS conducted an extensive investigation from September 2023 to June 2024 examining dog ads, accounts and groups on Facebook and Instagram of individuals that could not be verified as registered businesses. Content from Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK was analysed, and investigators found more than a hundred Facebook groups and over fifty Instagram accounts containing puppy ads from such profiles. In June 2024, the combined audience of the surveyed Facebook groups exceeded 600,000 members, including sellers and potential buyers. The trade of animals by private persons, however, is a clear violation of Meta’s own policies.

Following Meta’s reporting guidelines for suspicious activity, FOUR PAWS reported 64 posts, groups and users offering dogs on Facebook and Instagram in February 2024. However, only two ads were removed, and exclusively on Facebook Marketplace, with no action taken against any other reported content. Examples of content uncovered during the investigation included:

Exaggerated features and mutilations – the suffering of ‘trendy’ dogs

Puppies are not spared from ‘trends’ – such as prominent skin folds for ‘big rope’ Bulldogs – and suffer their whole live due to the deformities desired by buyers. Other dogs are brutally mutilated to achieve a particular appearance like cropped ears. The investigation found French Facebook groups in which American Bully puppies with cropped ears were advertised by a seller from Poland. Though the practice is prohibited in both countries, the seller openly shared ads in the private group. While such sales are illegal, examples such as the French Facebook group unveil how these kinds of questionable trades can flourish online due to a lack in legal consequences. “Hundreds of thousands of people are vulnerable to fraud by being exposed to images of ‘cute’ puppies without a second thought for the cruel circumstances in which they are bred and kept,” adds Nick Weston.

Emojis, hashtags and private chats – means to disguise sales activities on social media

Across Europe, unethical sellers have developed concrete methods to evade Meta’s monitoring and community guidelines. Some of the methods include avoiding explicit sales terms, group descriptions instructing members which words to avoid in posts and talking in code by relying on emojis and hashtags to conceal their intentions. Sellers often redirect potential buyers to private chats, sometimes faking their locations to sell to a particular country or posing as verified breeders to appear credible.