Through my work with SDSA & conversations with rescue orgs I have noticed something that deserves our attention.
Increasingly, members of the public are scrutinising animal welfare orgs work, which is no bad thing. Look at what happened recently with Miranda’s in USA. Citizens Jennifer Raymond and Jenna Moore played a key role on the ground in uncovering a horrific crime involving the deaths of multiple animals by shooting.
But we are being told that members of the public are increasingly being taught how to red flag animal welfare orgs remotely online. They are being told to examine photos & videos & what to look for in order to mark the org as suspicious.
Is that a bad thing?
On the face of it no of course not, we have forensically examined other “orgs” ourselves & proven that they exist not as the orgs they claim to be but as thieves. I can’t help noticing something that bothers me a great deal though. If communities are being taught as a movement, as we are told, who is doing the teaching & what exactly is being taught?
We should be able to understand what qualifies someone to provide that kind of guidance, which professional disciplines have informed it and what evidential or welfare framework sits behind it. This becomes very important when the watching moves across veterinary medicine, behaviour, finance, governance, fundraising and law, because no single area of expertise confers competence across all of them. Indeed do these people providing the advice even have revelant qualification in one area never mind them all. We simply do not know.
Educators are wonderful people, they inform, they change lives & they makes the world a better place. But it comes with responsibility. Responsible teaching shoud be informed & it should also make its own limits clear. It should help people understand not only what might warrant attention, but it should help citizens understand what they cannot safely conclude without further information or specialist expertise. And when somebody becomes concerned these concerns need proper assessment by a trained professional. Otherwise the risk of getting it wrong is very real and has terrible consequences for legitimate orgs, the people working in them, their volunteers & the animals themselves.
One of the things I have noticed is that orgs are being “hit” with drive by claims of neglect or insinuations of poor working & worse on the basis of something the commentator often cannot see. An organisation’s social media account is not the organisation. It is a tiny public facing window into something much larger.
Behind the photographs, videos and posts are the actual workings of an organisation: records, metrics, governance, policies, procedures, compliance, financial controls, professional input, risk management, complaints processes and systems through which decisions and outcomes are recorded and reviewed.
None of that necessarily appears in the twenty seconds somebody has just watched on Instagram. Yet increasingly, that tiny window is being treated as though it represents the whole operation. It doesn’t.
Social media is not an audit
Responsible organisations measure what they do. The precise metrics will differ according to the organisation and its work, but measurement is fundamental to knowing whether what we are doing is working. We audit everything we do, we have metrics & we report. Each quarter we are obliged to report to our board & we go well beyond the minimum that is expected of us. As CEO I publish my quarterly report on our website.
Behind the public facing organisation sits an infrastructure that social media doesn’t show. Governance establishes responsibility for decisions. Policies establish how things should be done. Compliance processes help ensure applicable obligations are being met. Financial systems record income and expenditure. Animal records document care. Metrics allow performance and outcomes to be measured over time.
Then there are the external layers of accountability. Organisations operate within the legal and regulatory frameworks applicable to their structure, activities and jurisdiction. Those frameworks will vary according to legal structure & geographical location but they exist independently of social media. Professionals working with organisations may have additional responsibilities to their own professional bodies.
A social media post is communication. It is not the underlying governance record. That distinction seems obvious when written down. Online, it is increasingly being forgotten or ignored.
Citizens cannot audit what they cannot see
This is where dissecting social media content can become problematic. Suppose somebody watches a short video from an animal facility and sees one water bowl in the video frame & more than one dog.
“I can see one water bowl.” That’s an observation.
“Is that the only water bowl?” That’s a question.
“There is only one water bowl.” That’s a factual assertion.
“These dogs don’t have adequate access to water.” That’s a welfare allegation.
Those statements are not interchangeable, a video may establish the first. It does not necessarily establish the others.
There may genuinely be inadequate water provision. Equally, there may be another water source immediately outside the camera frame. The viewer doesn’t know unless they ask. And I don’t know is one of the most important conclusions a responsible observer can reach.
A photograph has edges. A video has a beginning and an end. Neither automatically tells us what exists outside those boundaries, what happened immediately before recording began or what happened afterwards. A dog panting in a video is a panting dog. Determining why it is panting may require information that isn’t in the video. A particular animal not appearing in a video establishes that the animal wasn’t shown. It does not establish what has happened to that animal. A particular object not appearing in a photograph establishes that the object wasn’t photographed.
Absence from the frame is not evidence of absence from the animal’s life.
A red flag isn’t a verdict
The language of “red flags” can be useful. A genuine red flag tells us something may warrant closer examination. It does not tell us wrongdoing has been established.
The next step should therefore be inquiry. There may be a completely reasonable explanation. Orgs welcome questions. They share their work with you because they want you to see it. They want you to learn what they do, they want you to get to know the animals they are caring for, the issues they exist to solve & the outcomes both good & bad.
Questions are always welcomed. For example “which country is this dog in” or “why is that dog panting” are genuine questions that everyone should be more than happy to answer. But increasingly questions are being framed as accusations. An observer goes on the hunt for poor animal welfare or scamming & will use what they see to satisfy a decision they made long before they watched that organisations video, whether it is provable or not.
That is very dangerous behaviour.
Who is qualified to teach the watchers?
This becomes particularly important when we consider what people are being encouraged to assess. Veterinary medicine, animal behaviour, animal welfare, husbandry, finance, fundraising, governance, employment, law, potential criminal conduct.
No single qualification covers all of that.
A veterinarian’s expertise doesn’t make them an accountant. An accountant’s expertise doesn’t qualify them to diagnose an animal. A behaviour professional doesn’t consequently become an expert in organisational law. A lawyer doesn’t become an animal welfare scientist.
Responsible organisations understand professional boundaries. We consult people with appropriate expertise precisely because none of us knows everything.
Why should watchdog education be any different?
If somebody is teaching members of the public to identify veterinary, behavioural, financial, governance and legal “red flags”, there are reasonable questions to ask.
Who developed the guidance? What qualifications do they hold? Which appropriately qualified professionals contributed to areas outside their expertise? What established frameworks are being used? What evidential standards are taught?
And crucially, Are people being taught where their own competence ends?
Financial scrutiny requires knowledge too
People are entitled to ask questions about how organisations raise and use money, but asking a question does not automatically create an obligation for an organisation to disclose information that it is not otherwise required to make public. Organisations operate within financial, governance, reporting and disclosure requirements appropriate to their legal structure and jurisdiction, and those requirements are not the same everywhere.
The fact that an organisation does not publish individual staff salaries, detailed internal expenditure or other information that it is not required to disclose is not, by itself, evidence of secrecy or wrongdoing. Nor does discovering that somebody is paid for their work establish anything improper. The relevant question is whether the organisation is meeting the financial, governance and reporting obligations that actually apply to it not whether it satisfies a disclosure standard invented on social media.
An organisation using one lawful legal structure rather than another is not evidence of dishonesty simply because somebody expected it to have a different one.
The relevant question is what the organisation actually is, which rules apply to it and whether it is complying with those rules. This becomes especially important when words such as “scam” and “fraud” are used. Those are serious allegations.
The certainty and seriousness of the language used should reflect the strength of the evidence supporting it.
What are people being taught to do next?
Perhaps this is where part of the problem lies. Are people teaching what to notice without teaching what to do when they notice it.
In conversations with animal welfare organisations experiencing significant online criticism, an interesting pattern has emerged. Organisations describe serious accusations being made publicly on social media, yet report that those allegations have not been raised through their formal complaints processes or, to their knowledge, taken to the appropriate bodies capable of examining them. There may be perfectly ordinary explanations for that. Perhaps people don’t know where to go.
Someone knows how to leave a comment underneath an Instagram post. They know how to tag another account. They know how to publish their concern on Facebook or X. But do they know where to report a welfare concern? Do they know how to make a formal complaint?
Do they know that a concern about veterinary treatment and a concern about finances may require completely different expertise? Do they know which authority is responsible in the country concerned?
Perhaps nobody has taught them what to do after they notice a supposed red flag. If we’re teaching people what to notice but not teaching them where to take what they find, we’re teaching only half the process.
We already have a model for responsible public watching
Neighbourhood Watch offers an interesting comparison. Not because crime prevention and animal welfare are equivalent. They aren’t. But because it demonstrates an established principle of responsible public participation.
I was once secretary of a Neighbourhood Watch scheme. We received practical information from the police. We were encouraged to be observant. We knew how to pass information onwards. That didn’t make us police officers.
Being taught to notice potentially suspicious activity did not qualify us to investigate our neighbours, determine that somebody had committed a crime and publish our conclusions to the community. The principle was much simpler:
The citizen notices. The citizen reports. Appropriately trained people assess.
Reporting a concern and publishing an allegation are different acts
This distinction protects the person raising the concern too. Someone may genuinely believe they have discovered something serious. They may be right, Miranda’s Rescue has proven that.
But providing information to somebody capable of assessing it and publishing a serious allegation about an identifiable organisation or individual are different acts.
Depending upon the circumstances and applicable law, public allegations of fraud, dishonesty, cruelty, criminality or other serious misconduct can carry legal consequences.
That isn’t a reason to remain silent about genuine wrongdoing. It is a reason to understand the difference between raising a concern and asserting that something has happened.
Responsible watchdog education should teach that distinction before somebody discovers it the hard way. Judging by what is happening in our community at the moment that is not happening.
Responsible scrutiny should protect three parties
This is perhaps the most important principle of all.
Responsible watchdog education should protect three parties: the animal who may genuinely need help, the organisation or individual who should not be falsely accused, and the concerned member of the public who should not inadvertently expose themselves to consequences because nobody taught them the difference between reporting a concern and publishing an allegation.
Those interests are not competing interests. Teaching somebody to recognise a potential welfare problem, preserve genuine evidence and report appropriately protects the animal. Teaching them the difference between observation and inference protects an innocent organisation or individual. Teaching them where to report concerns, when specialist expertise is required and the responsibilities associated with public allegations protects the watcher.
Good watchdog education should make scrutiny safer and more effective for everyone.
Social media doesn’t create organisational accountability
There is another misconception worth addressing. An organisation does not suddenly become accountable because somebody has begun scrutinising its social media account.
Accountability was already there long before somebody decided to watch them.
The exact mechanisms depend upon the organisation’s legal structure, activities and jurisdiction, but organisations operate within the laws and regulatory requirements applicable to them.
There may be government oversight, licensing, inspection, financial and corporate reporting, taxation, professional regulation, employment requirements, data protection obligations, fundraising requirements and formal complaints procedures.
Internal governance adds another layer. People have defined responsibilities. No board member is elected without having a defined role & the ability to bring expertise with them.
Policies establish standards. Every decision is arrived at after a vote, those decisions are recorded in the register.
Risks are assessed, incidents are recorded and reviewed, there is a robust procedure for complaints which also need to be recorded & dealt with in accordance to policy. Finances are monitored, performance and outcomes are measured.
Compliance isn’t a photograph & governance isn’t visible in an instagram reel.
Metrics don’t necessarily appear underneath a video of dogs playing in a garden. But they exist behind the public facing organisation.
That doesn’t mean the organisation is necessarily doing everything correctly. It means determining whether it is doing things correctly requires considerably more than examining its social media feed.
Snapshots can mislead
Responsible organisational assessment looks for patterns and evidence. Hence the importance of records & reports.
Organisations measure precisely because isolated snapshots do not necessarily tell us how an organisation is performing. Yet social media encourages exactly the opposite approach.
A few seconds become the dataset, a photograph becomes the audit, a missing object becomes a finding, a single incident becomes an organisational culture.
Sometimes one piece of evidence really can reveal something extremely serious. But whether it does depends upon what the evidence actually establishes, not how dramatic it looks when isolated from everything surrounding it.
If a viewer of a 20 second video can only see one bowl of water in that frame it doesn’t prove that no other bowls exist it does not prove that an organisation is not providing their animals with an adequate drinking supply. It does not prove that a major welfare concern has been found.
Geography is part of competence too
There is another form of competence that receives remarkably little attention.
Geographical competence.
Social media allows someone in one country to scrutinise an organisation thousands of miles away. International scrutiny can be extraordinarily important. But animal welfare principles may cross borders while the systems surrounding them do not.
Much of Dog Desk’s international experience is concentrated in Türkiye. Our understanding there has developed through years of work on the ground, relationships with local professionals and community carers, legislation, policy and direct sources. And working internationally teaches humility very quickly. Knowing one country well doesn’t make us experts in another.
Organisational structures differ, law differs, regulation differs, licensing differs, municipal responsibilities differ, veterinary infrastructure differs, availability of diagnostics and medicines differs & resources differ.
Before deciding that something is improper because it wouldn’t happen that way at home, we need to establish how the system actually works where the organisation operates. Difference is not evidence of wrongdoing.
Crisis environments require even greater care
This becomes particularly important in earthquakes, conflict, displacement, mass abandonment and other emergencies. Crisis animal welfare doesn’t necessarily resemble ordinary animal care.
Accommodation may be temporary, treatment may take place in improvised surroundings, equipment may be limited & resources may be stretched.
None of that excuses cruelty or neglect. But neither can welfare be properly assessed without understanding the circumstances.
Whistleblowing is not social media scrutiny
There is an important distinction between watching public content and obtaining information from inside a situation. Dog Desk works with whistleblowers.
Some have access to information that outsiders could never obtain by studying social media posts. They may preserve documents, covertly record conversations or obtain footage of events that would otherwise remain hidden. Some potentially expose themselves to serious personal consequences in doing so. They are not filling gaps in public information with assumptions. They are bringing information out of those gaps.
Even then, their information requires assessment, context and, wherever possible, corroboration. Nobody is exempt from evidential standards.
Who watches the watchers?
This brings us back to where we started.
If someone assumes the role of teaching others to scrutinise organisations, it is reasonable to scrutinise the quality of that teaching.
What methodology is used, what professional expertise informs it, how are professional boundaries recognised, how are conflicts of interest managed, what evidential threshold is applied before a serious factual allegation is published?
What reporting routes are taught, what happens when information contradicts the original suspicion, is there a corrections process, can factual errors be challenged?
How is international work approached & what responsibility is accepted when something goes wrong?
These aren’t hostile questions. They are governance questions.
And that is perhaps the irony. Animal welfare organisations are bound by governance, risk, evidence, policies, metrics, compliance, complaints and accountability as part of responsible operation. Yet if somebody establishes themselves as a watchdog of those organisations, particularly if they begin teaching others to do the same it is reasonable to ask how those same principles appear in their own work.
Because getting it wrong has consequences
Accountability is not demonstrated by never making a mistake. It is demonstrated by what happens when one is discovered. Responsible scrutiny must be capable of examining new evidence, correcting factual errors, making those corrections sufficiently visible and stopping the repetition of claims that the evidence no longer supports.
That is so important on social media, where allegations can travel considerably further than corrections. A single claim can be screenshotted, reposted and repeated across multiple platforms until repetition begins to look like corroboration.
Twenty people repeating one unsupported allegation are still repeating one unsupported allegation. Meanwhile, the consequences can be very real. Donors can withdraw, volunteers can leave, professional relationships can be damaged, individuals can be subjected to abuse, and organisations can be forced to divert significant time and resources away from their work simply to respond.
Ultimately, the animals themselves can be affected. None of this is an argument for suppressing genuine concerns. It is an argument for taking accuracy seriously, because when allegations have consequences, so does getting them wrong.
What should responsible watchdog education look like?
Responsible watchdog education should teach people to notice and to ask questions, but it should also teach them how to preserve evidence, distinguish observation from inference and understand that a red flag is a reason to look further, not a finding of guilt. People need to know where genuine concerns can be reported, when professional expertise is required and why the legal, regulatory and practical context of the country in which an organisation operates matters. They should understand the responsibilities that accompany serious public allegations and be prepared to reconsider a conclusion when new information changes the evidence.
Finding an innocent explanation should never be regarded as a failure of scrutiny. The purpose of watching is not to prove the watcher right. It is to establish what is true.
Sometimes that process will uncover serious wrongdoing and an animal may be protected because somebody noticed something that others missed. Sometimes further examination will establish that there was no welfare failure at all. Responsible scrutiny has to be capable of reaching either conclusion.
And perhaps above all, we need to stop confusing what an organisation chooses to show on social media with the organisation itself. A photograph, Reel or twenty second video is a fragment of its public communication, not an audit of its work.
Behind the social media account are the records, metrics, governance, professional input, policies, compliance and systems of accountability that cannot possibly be contained within the camera frame. Some information will be publicly available, some may be reportable to or examinable by the bodies with appropriate authority, and some will quite properly remain confidential. None of it can be reconstructed simply by studying what happens to appear or not appear in a social media post.
If we are going to teach people to watch animal welfare organisations, then we need to teach more than a list of things to be suspicious of.
We need to teach people how to turn concern into responsible scrutiny: how to establish what the evidence actually shows, recognise what it does not show, know when further expertise is needed, and understand the responsibility that comes with telling other people what they believe they have found.
Because ultimately responsible scrutiny rests on a very simple discipline, know what you know. Know what you don’t know. And never invent the bit in between.