Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has apologised after Instagram users were subjected to a flood of violence, gore, animal abuse and dead bodies on their Reels feeds.
Users reported the footage after an apparent malfunction in Instagram’s algorithm, which curates what people see on the app.
Reels is a feature on the social media platform that allows users to share short videos, similar to TikTok.
An Instagram forum on Reddit, the online discussion platform, contained posts from users referencing the graphic material that had appeared in their feeds in midweek.
One user on the subreddit wrote: “I just saw at least 10 people die on my reels.”
There were also references by users to a video of a man being crushed by an elephant. Others flagged footage of a man being dismembered by a helicopter and a video where “a guy put his face into boiling oil”. Several users posted videos of their Reels feeds dominated by “sensitive content” screens that are designed to shield users from graphic material.
A list of violent content on one user’s feed, published by the tech news site 404, included: a man being set on fire; a man shooting a cashier at point-blank range; videos from an account called “PeopleDeadDaily”; and a pig being beaten with a wrench. The user in question had a biking-related Instagram account, 404 Media reported.
Another Reddit user wrote: “For the past 24 hours, it feels like Instagram’s algorithm has gone rogue. My feed is absolutely packed with violent Reels – like, one after the other.
“It’s like Instagram is now trying to make me question if I accidentally followed a ‘bloodshed and chaos’ account. I get that the platform’s all about ‘engagement’ and ‘trending,’ but did they really think this was the way to get people to scroll more?”
A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, said: “We have fixed an error that caused some users to see content on their Instagram Reels feed that should not have been recommended. We apologise for the mistake.”
The error follows recent changes to Meta’s approach to content moderation. However, the company told 404 Media that the deluge of graphic videos was not related to the overhaul of Meta’s content rules, which included removing factcheckers and “dramatically” reducing the amount of censorship on its platforms.
Meta’s content guidelines state the company will remove content that is “particularly violent or graphic” and that some imagery will be shielded by sensitive content screens. In the UK, the Online Safety Act requires social media platforms to take measures to prevent under-18s from seeing material that is harmful to them such as violent, hateful or abusive material, which will include configuring their algorithms to filter out such content.
One internet safety campaign group demanded a “full explanation” of what had happened to Instagram’s algorithm.
The Molly Rose Foundation, set up by the family of the UK teenager Molly Russell, who killed herself in 2017 after viewing distressing content on Instagram, said questions needed to answered about why such graphic content was on the platform in the first place.
“As Instagram rolls back content moderation this is likely to be a sign of things to come,” said Andy Burrows, the foundation’s chief executive. “Meta’s changes will mean this type of content is more freely available and will more often be recommended to appear in user’s feeds.”
