WeRateDogs

WeRateDogs is a Twitter account that rates people's dogs with a humorous comment about the dog. It was started in 2015 by college student Matt Nelson, and has received international media coverage both for its popularity and for the attention drawn to social media copyright law when it was suspended by Twitter.

History

Nelson, a 19-year-old golf management major at Cambell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, got the idea in 2015 when he and a friend were eating hamburgers at Applebee's and he asked his friend to rate the burger. Nelson wondered why a rating system couldn't apply to dogs and went home and started his Twitter account, asking people to send him photos of dogs, then reposting selected photos with a numerical rating and a humorous comment. As of June, 2016, Fox News reported that Nelson had 362,000 Twitter followers and was receiving 700 to 800 photos a day. Nelson also has a clothing store online with clothes related to phrases he's made up about dogs, as well as a Facebook and Instagram account. He has successfully used the accounts to raise money for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).[1][2][3][4][5]

Copyright Issues

WeRateDogs brought media attention to copyright and suspension policies on Twitter when the popular account was closed several times because of spurious Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaints brought by competitors and unknown accounts. "For Nelson and many of his fans," wrote the Washington Post, "the whole ordeal has raised some serious questions about whether it’s simply too easy for pranksters to successfully remove content from the Internet by abusing the copyright claim process, particularly on Twitter." [6][7][8]

References

  1. ↑ Lee Moran, "There’s Way Too Much Cuteness In This New Dog-Rating Twitter Feed," Huffington Post, Dec 12, 2015
  2. ↑ Caroline Garnar, "Yapping It Up", The Daily Mail, 8 December 2015 |
  3. ↑ Kelli Bender, "WeRateDogs Is the Canine Hot or Not of Twitter", People, Dec. 9, 2015
  4. ↑ "Bored College Student Spawns Wildly Popular WeRateDogs Twitter Account, Fox News, June 8, 2016
  5. ↑ Alison Lynch, This Twitter Account Is Rating People's Dogs and Its Adorable, Metro UK, December 7, 2015
  6. ↑ Abby Ohlheiser, "The Internet’s most famous dog rater keeps disappearing from Twitter", Washington Post, February 11, 2016
  7. ↑ AJ Dellinger , "Bogus DMCA claim temporarily takes down one of Twitter's best dog feeds," The Daily Dot, Feb 10, 2016/
  8. ↑ Clinton Nguyen, Twitter’s Most Harmlessly Charming Account Was Mysteriously Suspended, Vice, February 9, 2016

Links

WeRateDogs on Twitter

WeRateDogs on Facebook

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 9/27/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.