Originally published 3 October 2017 | ||
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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.
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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).
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."