Aged care CPR debate, Auckland's St James Theatre gets funding, Andrew Tate leaves Romania, and Gene Hackman passes away. Stay updated with the latest news.
Warning: This story contains graphic content
Instagram Reels was briefly flooded with violent and graphic content last night, with people reportedly seeing videos of drug overdoses, animal attacks and others dying.
One Auckland user was made aware of the problem about 8.30pm from a Facebook group called I GOTCHU SIS when one member advised others not to look at their Instagram Reels.
She assumed their algorithm wasn’t working, however was confronted by the same gruesome content upon logging into her Instagram.
“Personally what I have seen is people landing the wrong way and their bones breaking backwards, people dying from overdoses. It’s something else,” she said.
“People have kids on Instagram and if they see stuff like that, it could be really traumatising.”
Instagram users were flooded with violent and graphic content following a glitch on the app's Reels page. Photo / Alex Cairns
One woman commented in the Facebook group, saying “I’ve seen someone get stabbed, a woman get raped, someone crushed by an elephant, a shark attack”.
Instagram quickly apologised, saying they had fixed the error causing the graphic videos to be shown on the Instagram Reels.
“We have fixed an error that caused some users to see content in their Instagram Reels feed that should not have been recommended,” a spokesman said.
“We apologise for the mistake.”
The woman said she eventually stopped scrolling because every reel became progressively worse.
“If it comes to videos that will trigger me, I don’t want to see it because it will ruin me for the next couple of weeks or more,” she said.
“Things like this can really stay in your mind for life, it’s just not okay.”
According to Meta’s transparency report, the organisation removed more than 10 million pieces of violent and graphic content from Instagram in the July to September period last year.
Nearly 99% of that content was proactively found and taken down by Meta before users reported it.
David Williams is an Auckland-based Multimedia Journalist who joined the Herald in 2023. He covers breaking news and general topics.
Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
