TECH NEWS – Meta has apologized after unusually violent and crude content appeared on its social platform.

There were some interesting videos (like a man being “folded” by an elephant, a homeless man being humped by a dog, someone’s head being set on fire, someone falling off a carnival ride and splattering on the asphalt) that would be appropriate on another dedicated site, but not on Instagram. There’s a lot of very risqué content that’s popped up, so a few more examples: beheadings, shootings, trench warfare in Ukraine, some sexual content…

There was someone on Reddit who got suspended for some fat jokes on Instagram and didn’t understand how nudity, sex, sexual violence, murder, stabbings were all in line with Meta’s policies. Many people decided to stay away from Instagram until the system was fixed (for example, one commenter saw a girl being stabbed and the blood was visible). Many saw something wrong with Meta’s algorithms…

What’s Happening with Instagram? Violent Reels Everywhere for the Last 24 Hours!
byu/No_Evidence_3155 inInstagram

And that’s exactly what happened: a Meta spokesperson told The Guardian that a bug had been fixed that prevented non-recommended content from showing up in users’ feeds when it shouldn’t have. According to the company, the sudden appearance of a lot of gory content is unrelated to the removal of fact-checkers from both Facebook and Instagram. That still doesn’t answer the question of how such content could be on Instagram. The other question may be valid: why were they not removed as soon as possible?

Meta’s policy is specific to violent and more serious content, but it is surprisingly lenient, because if it depicts the violent death of a person, the viewer is warned before viewing, and only those over 18 are allowed to view it… but perhaps Mark Zuckerberg’s platform is too lenient, because while it can’t be too strict, it shouldn’t be too lenient either.

Source: PCGamer, The Guardian