On Wednesday, February 26, Instagram went violent. Instead of its regular feeds, the site promoted a series of increasingly violent reels.
Starting with just basic fights, the first being two kids fighting over a bracelet, it quickly became more brutal. Fights with serious injuries such as a broken arm or a torn leg muscle quickly began to circulate.
“I was like, ‘this is weird.’ It’s a lot more violent than Instagram has even been for me. I came across a video of a fight, which caught me off guard.”
james friel ’26
“I was like this is weird. It’s a lot more violent than Instagram has even been for me,” Fifth Former James Friel said. “I came across a video of a fight, which caught me off guard.”
Soon, the platform began to show content that would only be found on gore sites. Netizens were comparing it to Live Leak as crazy videos began to circulate.
Videos in this vein continued to pop up. Circulated by accounts such as DeadPeopleDeadly, the wave of violence pushed to almost the entire Instagram population.
“I saw a guy get brutally decapitated at a construction site. It just caught me off guard and made me snap out of a good mood for a few minutes,” Fifth Former James MacColl said.
In addition to decapitations, videos depicted shootings and executions. Videos that looked like they were from a cartel or from a terrorist organization popped up left and right.
A video of a person circulated with zip-tied hands being dropped off of a boat into the ocean and disappearing into the water. Another video showed someone being forced to lie on a mat on the ground and then getting shot in the back.
Another video featured a mortally wounded man missing almost the entirety of the skin on his back, who looked seconds away from dying. Another graphic video showed a video of a birth by C-Section.
While a few of the videos received a sensitive content warning, the majority of the videos were uncensored, forcing anyone who opened the reels tab to watch content that they most definitely did not want to see.
The impact of such violent content reverberated throughout the student body.
“Seeing these videos made me feel uncomfortable,” Friel said. “I was quite surprised by the contrast of the videos compared to what I am used to seeing. It was so violent.”
Other students agreed. “It was funny for a few minutes. It was interesting and new,” Sixth Former Milan Varma said,” but then it got weird.”
The next day, Instagram’s parent company Meta released an apology.
“We have fixed an error that caused some users to see content in their Instagram Reels feed that should not have been recommended,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC. “We apologize for the mistake.”
