CNN anchors bewildered by Instagram 'glitch' that served reels of 'people being killed'

CNN anchors Kate Bolduan and Sara Sidner were nonplussed when reporting on extremely violent content accidentally showing up on Instagram feeds.

"Social media platform Meta apologizing for an error that resulted in flooding Instagram feeds with graphic content. For some users, they were suggested content that showed people being killed. I had to read this a few times to believe what I was saying. What's happened here?" Bolduan asked reporter Clare Duffy.

"Yeah, it's really disturbing," Duffy began. "People said that on their Instagram reels feed — the short form video feature — they were getting these videos that had sensitive content warnings, video showing people being maimed or killed — really violent, graphic content. And Meta said this was a 'glitch.' It's an error that it is fixing."

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Duffy continued that the error "comes as Instagram and Meta more broadly have made big changes to their content moderation policies. The company, for example, has rolled back some of its automated screening of violent content, and said that only the worst violations would be automatically taken down. And Mark Zuckerberg himself, the CEO, acknowledged that that could lead to more harmful content on the platform. Now, we don't know that that played a role in this situation. It may really have just been a 'glitch,' but not a great look for the company right now."

Sidner asked why video of "people being killed" was on Instagram in the first place.

"What's the glitch?" Bolduan exclaimed. "Like, how quick, how long was this happening?"

Duffy answered, "It's, so far as we know, it was happening a lot of yesterday. And there were, I mean, thousands of reports of this on Twitter, people talking about it. And, so, it was pretty widespread before they were able to get a handle on it."

Watch the clip below via CNN or click the link.