For subscribers
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.
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On Feb 27, reports circulated of an “error” on the app that pushed videos of extreme violence and death into Instagram feeds.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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.


