Charlie Kirk’s graphic death videos on social highlight content policy failures

Widely accessible videos of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk getting shot this week indicate content moderation efforts are still hugely inadequate for some of the biggest social media companies.

Within minutes of the event, close-up videos of the shooting from multiple angles began circulating on social, including being pushed by algorithms into users’ curated “For You” feeds. By Friday morning, nearly two days later, companies were still struggling to handle the volume. We could find instances in searches across X, Bluesky, and Meta’s Threads, many without sensitive content labels — which seems to violate the companies’ own stated policies regarding graphic content.

One video on X depicting the moment Kirk was shot had been shared 1,800 times and garnered more than 2.4 million views before being taken down Friday morning, after 24 hours online. Another with 230,000 views is still available, with a sensitive content warning that wasn’t there Thursday. The numbers are mostly lower on Threads, though a search by Semafor on Friday found the videos were easier to locate on the Meta-owned platform. Meta told Semafor it was working to add sensitive content labels to videos of the shooting and remove posts glorifying it, per its policies.

Bluesky said it has been removing the close-up videos and suspending some accounts. X didn’t respond to a request for comment.