Why are there so many animal abuse videos on DouYin? And it doesn’t seem like the platform bans these kinds of videos. Just today in the past hour I’ve seen 8 vicious animal abuse videos on the platform. Does anyone have any insight on this?
I had a very odd interaction inside Sandton city mall today that left me very confused. I was walking inside Sandton City Mall around lunch time (relatively busy) when a man approached and stopped me. He said he was looking for assistance with translation. He spoke Zulu to me (which I speak) and indicated that his English is not good and that he needed help translating Zulu into English and vice versa. He was wearing a jacket with “sibanye stillwater” (the mining company) branding and said he works for them and was at the mall to meet someone but couldn’t communicate with that person in English to establish where the meeting place is. He said he had a delivery to make. He said he would give the person a call and asked me to ask them (in English) where the meeting place is, and then subsequently translate that info into Zulu for him. I thought it was a pretty straight forward ask and so this gentleman made the phone call and gave me the phone.
A man on the other side of the phone-call answered and proceeded to tell me where this “lost” gentleman was supposed to go (after I explained the situation). This man (on the other side of the phonecall) then asks me to translate into Zulu the following [paraphrased] sentence for the “lost” man standing next to me: “Do you have the 4kg of platinum? I have the R950,000”. My alarm bells immediately went off and I began to feel something was off. Anyways, I translated the sentence into Zulu and gave the phone back to the gentleman before he could even answer that question (even though he visibly wanted me to continue with the translation). The phone call was still active when I gave the phone back, and I began to walk away. The gentleman then followed me for about 3 meters saying that he would appreciate it if I went with him to the meeting place because he is not familiar with the area. I told him no (while speeding up) and he eventually left me alone.
This definitely felt very sketchy and I wanted to raise awareness about this incident. I don’t know what their ultimate goal was, but anything is possibly in SA.