Instagram ‘Error’ Fixed after Users Report Flood of Violent Reels

Meta has apologized for a technical glitch after some users said they saw violent and graphic videos in recommended Reels videos on Instagram.

“We fixed a bug that caused some users to see violent content in Reels that wasn’t meant to be recommended, and we apologize for the error,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.

Several Instagram users reported seeing a batch of recommended videos in their Reels feed on Tuesday that showed people being beaten or killed, including several that the platform has labeled as sensitive content.

The issue comes as Meta struggles to boost sharing of short-form videos on its platforms, with the future of rival TikTok in the U.S. in question.

Meta is making major changes to its hateful conduct policy, hours after saying it would get rid of fact-checkers.

Meta has recently made major and controversial changes to its content moderation policies and practices, saying in January that it would ditch fact-checkers in favor of a user-generated community feedback model to add context to posts, and that it would scale back its automated content removal systems to focus on only the most extreme rule violations, such as terrorism, child abuse, drugs, fraud and scams.