Content warning: this article contains graphic descriptions of violence against people and animals.An error in Instagram Reels caused its algorithm to show some users video after video of horrific violence, animal abuse, murders, dead bodies, and other gore, Meta told 404 Media. The company said we apologize for the mistake.Sometime in the last few days, this error caused peoples Reels algorithms to suddenly change. A 404 Media reader who has a biking-related Instagram account reached out to me and said that his feed, which is typically dogs and bikes, had become videos of people getting killed: I had never seen someone being eaten by a shark, followed by someone getting killed by a car crash, followed by someone getting shot, he told 404 Media.To test this, the person let me login to his Instagram account, and I scrolled Reels for about 15 minutes. There were a couple videos about dogs and a couple videos about bikes, but the vast majority of videos were hidden behind a sensitive content warning. I will describe videos I saw when I clicked through the warnings, many of which had thousands of likes and hundreds of comments:An elephant repeatedly stepping on and flattening a manA man attacking a pig with a wrenchA close-up video of someone who had just been shot in the headA woman crying while laying on top of a loved one who had just been shot to deathA man on a motorcycle stopping next to a pedestrian and shooting them in the head with a pistolA pile of dead bodies in what looked to be a war-type situationA small plane crash in front of a crowd of peopleA group of people beating a crocodile to deathA few videos by an account called PeopleDeadDailyA man being lit on fireA man shooting a cashier at point blank rangeMost, but not all, of these videos were behind a sensitive content warning label, which wont play the video unless you click a button that says see reel. In this persons feed, I also saw video after video of people getting jumped, attacked, into fistfights, and being hit by cars, which were not behind sensitive content warning labels. A close-up video of a person falling out of a tower of terror-style amusement park ride, and patrons screaming, was also not behind a warning label.0:00 /0:10When this user reached out to me and told me he was seeing almost exclusively gore videos on his Reels algorithm, I wondered if it would be worth writing a story at all, because all of us at 404 Media regularly see incredibly disturbing content on Instagram. Was this any different than a normal day on Instagram, or had he just ended up on the death algorithm as Sam and Emanuel both called it and have both ended up on? Even the person who initially told me about this had this thought: Ive been telling people about this and hearing, Oh its cuz u liked something, maybe someone u followed changed their profile, he said. I feel like Im in the Twilight Zone. I feel like nobody Ive talked to today understands how disturbing what is being pushed is.Then I looked at the comments of many of these videos and it became clear that the issue was widespread. Here are comments I saw on the gore videos:What happened today? My feed is full of shoot, killing, thriller clips, fighting, killing human/animals, murder, and torture. Feed got f**ckedTodays algorithm showed me around 70 murders, 100+ accidents, and around 115 violence videos, is anyone on Instagram noticing it?Bro todays feed is not for beginnersPor que me sale Gore en mi ap de racismo? (Why am I getting gore on my racism app?)Yo wtf is ig becomingWhat is Instagram on today?Algorithm is insane todayWhy the fuck I have so many like this today???This isnt a normal day, some DARKWEB shit going on here.Not Instagram more like instagore.Nearly every recent post on the Instagram subreddit, meanwhile, is about gore. Post titles include Instagram is now 100% gore, Guys I cant literally sleep, Meta cant get away with this, This recent situation has finally helped me make the decision to delete Instagram, Whats happening with Instagram? Violent reels everywhere for the last 24 hours!, cant believe my feed full of cute cat videos got replaced with this shit, a video of someone scrolling through a dozen straight sensitive content label videos, a post referring to children being traumatized while scrolling, various conspiracies about why this may have happened, and more.I feel like I lost some humanity today when I exposed myself to seeing so many of those types of videos, Gore, deaths and what broke me the most was animal cruelty, one post read. Excuse me if I sound a bit exaggerated but death, pain and human suffering is something that makes me sick, I always imagine What would happen if I or my family were there? i can't sleep when my mind replays those videos.In an email, a Meta spokesperson told 404 Media 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. They said that the problem does not have anything to do with Metas recent announcement that it would loosen some content moderation rules.To prove that this was actually happening, I sent Meta six links to graphic reels. These included two videos of people getting shot in the face, a video of a dead body with no context or obvious news value, a person getting lit on fire, the account called PeopleDeadDaily, and the tower of terror video. None of these videos have been deleted.One of the many problems preventing people from actually holding Meta to account for any of this is that everyones feed is so incredibly personalized. Like I said, because we report on the darker corners of the internet, my Instagram feed is full of horrific things on a daily basis, which is probably not everyones experience.When we talk about things like content moderation, the vast majority of the job is deleting videos of terrorism, murder, horrific violence, and things like this, not censoring specific viewpoints, which is part of why the job itself is so traumatizing. Meta has signaled that it intends to do less content moderation overall. And so the future of Instagram, for us all, may be one where you login to see what your friends are up to and instead have videos of people getting murdered shoved algorithmically into your feed.Jason is a cofounder of 404 Media. He was previously the editor-in-chief of Motherboard. He loves the Freedom of Information Act and surfing.More from Jason Koebler