By Meghan Bobrowsky and Jeff Horwitz
Meta apologized Wednesday night for what it said was an "error" that led to graphic and violent videos flooding the feeds of a vast number of Instagram users, including minors.
The videos, which were recommended on some users' Reels tab, included people who appeared to have been shot to death and run over by vehicles. Some of the recommended videos had "sensitive content" warnings on them while others didn't.
A Wall Street Journal reporter's account featured scores of videos of people being shot, mangled by machinery, and ejected from theme park rides, often back to back. The videos originated on pages that the reporter didn't follow with names such as "BlackPeopleBeingHurt," "ShockingTragedies" and "PeopleDyingHub."
View counts on some of the promoted videos suggested that Instagram's recommendations had massively boosted their viewership, with view counts on them often exceeding that of the accounts' other posts by millions of views.
"We have fixed an error that caused some users to see content in their Instagram Reels feed that should not have been recommended," an Instagram spokesman said. "We apologize for the mistake." The spokesman declined to comment on the scale of the issue.
The spokesman also said the torrent of videos were unrelated to the company's decision to adjust its content moderation policies to avoid banning content in a way that censored speech. Instead, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company would focus on "high-severity" violations.
The company also said it planned to disable proactive scanning for a wide swath of prohibited content, refraining from using AI to remove or demote posts unless human users officially reported the content as objectionable. The company didn't immediately respond to a question about whether that system remains in place for content categories such as violence and gore.
Write to Meghan Bobrowsky at meghan.bobrowsky@wsj.com and Jeff Horwitz at jeff.horwitz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 27, 2025 01:01 ET (06:01 GMT)
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