, Columnist
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.
Instagram users shouldn’t have to worry they’ll be subjected to images of violence and death.
Photographer: Vincent Feuray/AFP/Getty Images
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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.