Meta Is Apologizing to Users Who Saw Sexual and Violent Content on Instagram

In spite of its many controversies, Meta and its platforms have generally been good about keeping the most graphic and explicit content away from their users. In late February, though, some users got flooded with that kind of content as part of their Reels recommendations, leading many to wonder whether something had happened to make that content available.

The issue resolved itself relatively quickly, and recommendation feeds are now apparently back to normal. Here's what we know about where that explicit content came from.

In a statement released after the issue was resolved, Meta explained that the flood of sensitive content was caused by an "error."

“We have fixed an error that caused some users to see content in their Instagram Reels feed that should not have been recommended. We apologize for the mistake,” a spokesperson for the company explained.

Meta made the fix after a number of Instagram users began posting about the content on their other channels.

Some users claimed that they continued to see the content even when they were using Instagram's "Sensitive Content Control" setting, which allows users to adjust the level of sensitivity on the content they see.

Meta's own policies suggest that the company works to protect its users from "videos depicting dismemberment, visible innards or charred bodies,” as well as “sadistic remarks towards imagery depicting the suffering of humans and animals.”

The policy does allow for some sensitive content, saying that videos that raise awareness about important issues like human rights abuses, armed conflicts or acts of terrorism are permitted, but may come affixed with some sort of content warning label.

It seems that the error inside of Instagram led to a flood of this content, some of which was not connected to those any sort of positive aim.

According to their own website, Meta employs more than 15,000 people as well as artificial intelligence to review content on the app and determine whether it meets their policy definitions or not.

This team is still active, but the flood of sensitive content comes just weeks after the company announced a shift that was designed to promote more free expression on the app, and to allow for more explicitly political content.

It's unclear whether those changes will affect how much sensitive content is allowed on Instagram, and the announcement seemed to be geared more toward allowing people to say controversial things than to posting explicit content.

The new policy is still unfolding, though, so only time will tell.

What's clear though, is that this flood of sensitive content was not the result of a new policy. It was the result of an error that the team inside Meta worked quickly to resolve. These kinds of errors are bound to happen on any website where tons of content is posted, although it's hard to imagine an error that could be more devastating to a social media platform's brand.