There are two videos. One from the crowd, the most raw. You see Charlie Kirk framed in front. On the right side of the screen the visor of a red hat appears. The bullet arrives. Kirk falls from the chair. The second was shot next to Charlie Kirk. It is less violent. You do not see its face directly or the blood that comes out of the neck. The whole scene is taken to the side.
In the last two days, the videos of Charlie Kirk’s death have appeared in thousands of feeds on social media. Out of x, above all. Reproduced perhaps millions of times. They were the first result of the research. Filters were not covered. There were no warnings. It was enough to click play and see them. And from here they passed quickly on other social networks. Sometimes with some corrections to avoid censorship of the algorithms, sometimes as they were found.
The step back for moderation on social media
What happened before we know it. In recent years the attention of the platforms for moderation It has changed. First of all, interior teams were dismantled, as happened to Twitter shortly after theacquisition by Elon Musk. Then some Fact Checking programs were collected. This is what happened in Meta that announced, at least for the United States, the transition to a system similar to Community Notes. Users report what is right and what is verified and what is not.
Murder of Charlie Kirk, the story of the false killer: “On social media suddenly everyone says it’s me”
Even Tiktok, who until 2023 was the social with more moderators in Italy, is taking six steps back leaving the moderation of content in the hands of algorithms. In the last few weeks we have seen strikes of moderators of TikTok fired in Germany and in United Kingdom.
Certain. We cannot say that keeping all the stakes on the moderation set in recent years all this it would not have happened. Also because the work of moderators is complex: they are people exposed to hundreds of violent videos per day. But we can say that it has happened now. With these policies and with all the reductions that have been in the efforts to block the contents of this type.
Tiktok’s answer on Charlie Kirk’s video
Social networks, all social networks, now have one Very long historian with violent videos. Also with those of the attacks. One of the best known cases dates back to March 2019when in Christchurch in New Zealand a 28 -year -old man killed 51 people in two Islamic prayer places by broadcasting everything in Direct on Facebook.
Something seemed improved but the Video of Charlie Kirk’s death He had no block. On the contrary. On x for a long time the most bloody sequence appeared among the first results to users who were looking for news about the attack. After three days there is still the video shot on the side.
In the hours after the spread of the video there was some moderation intervention by the platforms. Jamie FavazzaTiktok’s spokesman, explained to Wired’s US edition: “We have implemented further safeguard measures to prevent people who unexpectedly view movies that violate our rules”. Maybe with some delay display.
