It's true, this is a big issue unfortunately. These kinds of videos lead to the impression that it's as easy to keep a pet otter as a dog or cat. It's made a big business out of poaching. Organized criminals killing otter mums and stealing their pups to sell them off. And these youtubers know this and continue, they keep their many millions of followers in the dark about this and keep up the facade. These people have more publicity than anyone in the otter conservation space could dream to have, but they're just interested in supplying cute videos for the masses. I don't watch any of these pet otter channels anymore.

I wish that I could enjoy these videos. I'll admit it, they are certainly cute, but the fact that they're so cute isn't helping the otters, because it just encourages more poachers to go out and harm wild otters. I've stopped watching them, and I wish that there was some sort of way to raise awareness about how harmful these channels are to otters, but I don't know how we could get that message out to the people that need to hear it

It's unfortunate how popular these videos are. Too many people don't know.