The account was started in 2015 by college student Matt Nelson, and has received international media attention both for its popularity and for the attention drawn to social media copyright law when it was suspended by Twitter based on false Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaints.
[1][3] Nelson and his team of four receive 800 to 1,000 submissions daily and work to narrow them down to about one high-quality piece of dog content per day.
[8] WeRateDogs has successfully used the account to raise money for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), as well as individual GoFundMe campaigns.
[13] In October 2017, Nelson released a book based on the Twitter account, #WeRateDogs: The Most Hilarious and Adorable Pups You’ve Ever Seen.
"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.