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Content warning: this article contains graphic descriptions of violence against people and animals.
An “error” in Instagram Reels caused its algorithm to show some users video after video of horrific violence, animal abuse, murders, dead bodies, and other gore, Meta told 404 Media. The company said “we apologize for the mistake.”
Sometime in the last few days, this error caused people’s Reels algorithms to suddenly change. A 404 Media reader who has a biking-related Instagram account reached out to me and said that his feed, which is “typically dogs and bikes,” had become videos of people getting killed: “I had never seen someone being eaten by a shark, followed by someone getting killed by a car crash, followed by someone getting shot,” he told 404 Media.
To test this, the person let me login to his Instagram account, and I scrolled Reels for about 15 minutes. There were a couple videos about dogs and a couple videos about bikes, but the vast majority of videos were hidden behind a “sensitive content” warning. I will describe videos I saw when I clicked through the warnings, many of which had thousands of likes and hundreds of comments:
- An elephant repeatedly stepping on and flattening a man
- A man attacking a pig with a wrench
- A close-up video of someone who had just been shot in the head
- A woman crying while laying on top of a loved one who had just been shot to death
- A man on a motorcycle stopping next to a pedestrian and shooting them in the head with a pistol
- A pile of dead bodies in what looked to be a war-type situation
- A small plane crash in front of a crowd of people
- A group of people beating a crocodile to death
- A few videos by an account called “PeopleDeadDaily”
- A man being lit on fire
- A man shooting a cashier at point blank range