Instagram flooded feeds with gore. 'Sorry' doesn't cut it

Users need to hold Meta to account for showing them videos of extreme violence and death.

- Dave Lee

When I was 14, I was looking for a video on the most popular file-sharing app of the time — Limewire — and started a download.

The video that arrived did not match the description. What I saw instead is as vivid in my mind today as it was in the seconds after I'd shut it off, reacting too slowly to miss the horror of a young woman's murder. That's the sort of thing that could happen in those days, when the internet was a true Wild West. It was the risk you took when you used those kinds of services.

There should be no such danger for people who use Instagram.

Yet on Feb 27, reports circulated — in 404 Media, the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere — of an "error" on the app that pushed videos of extreme violence and death into their feeds, nestled between their usual serving of friends and influencers. Feeds started to take a dark turn the day before, the Journal reported.

Those affected are thought to include minors.

Some of the videos were presented with a "sensitive content" warning that requires a user to tap before the clip is revealed. But many of them didn't — they just automatically started to play.