Summary
- Instagram Reels, a hugely popular feature with 17.6 million daily watch hours, is experiencing a sudden surge of violent and explicit content, shocking users and disrupting their experience.
- Users are reporting being traumatized by graphic videos, encountering them frequently despite content preference settings, suggesting a potential algorithm malfunction or content moderation failure.
- Despite widespread user outcry and reports of disturbing content, Meta has yet to acknowledge or address the issue.
Instagram boasts over 2 billion monthly active users, and while short-form videos might not be an appealing factor for a subset of those 2 billion, Instagram’s Reels have undoubtedly become a cornerstone of the Instagram experience (thanks TikTok).
Currently, Instagram Reels gain over 17.6 million watch hours daily, with users spending roughly half their time on the platform viewing Reels — and that is precisely why the recent surge in graphic Reel content is a cause of concern.
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Several users have reported a disturbing shift in Reels content pushed by Instagram, with videos depicting graphic violence, sexual content, disturbing acts of shooting, stabbing, and violence taking over user feeds. At least in my experience, the switch seems to have been flipped sometime on Tuesday night, but there are user reports from a few days ago that highlight the same concern.
The frequency of encounters with sensitive content is alarming, with numerous users stating they encounter videos with sensitive content after only a handful of “normal” Reels.
“Is it just me, or has Instagram reels turned into a war zone? Nothing but fights, gore, and pure chaos on the feed,” wrote a user on X, while others have suggested violent Reels creeping through even with settings to limit sensitive content being in place.
Instagram is reportedly looking to launch Reels as a separate app, as highlighted by The Information, though that is very unlikely to be the cause of the recent surge in graphic content. Some users have claimed that Instagram’s content moderation team is on strike, though those claims appear to be baseless. The surge in violent content could be connected to a bug in Instagram’s content moderation and/or algorithmic controls, though we’re entirely certain. What is clear, however, is that users are appalled, and rightfully so.
“I hope I don’t see this all the time on Instagram. Today, I went on Instagram and I just saw people dying, fighting, why? I hope I don’t see this all the time on Instagram,” wrote a Reddit user, while a different one said that they’re actually “traumatised.”
Meta is yet to acknowledge the issue.
