Charlie Kirk Was Shot and Killed in a Post-Content-Moderation World

Another TikTok video Degeling shared pinch WIRED showed a slow-motion, close-up perspective of nan slug hitting Kirk’s neck. The reside of nan video was conspiratorial: The personification who uploaded it added spooky euphony and a digitally narrated voice, asking, “What is nan achromatic point connected his garment and why did it move for illustration this earlier he sewage shot?” As of Thursday morning, nan video was still online. It had been up for 8 hours and had much than 900 comments (with galore saying nan “black thing” was a microphone).

As of Thursday morning, connected Instagram, a hunt for “Charlie Kirk shot” surfaced a close-up video of nan incident arsenic nan first result. The video autoplays arsenic a thumbnail, without warning. At nan clip of writing, nan video had 15.3 cardinal views.

Not only are nan Kirk shooting videos spreading rapidly, but immoderate are successful clear usurpation of nan platforms’ societal media policies. For example, TikTok’s position of usage authorities that nan institution does not let “gory, gruesome, disturbing, aliases highly convulsive content.”

“We are saddened by nan assassination of Charlie Kirk and nonstop our deepest condolences to his woman Erika, their 2 young children, and their family and friends,” TikTok spokesperson Jamie Favazza said successful a statement. "These horrific convulsive acts person nary spot successful our society. We stay committed to proactively enforcing our Community Guidelines and person implemented further safeguards to forestall group from unexpectedly viewing footage that violates our rules."

On different platforms, nan Kirk video falls into a grey area. Meta’s overarching argumentation is to age-restrict definite content, require informing labels, and region immoderate schematic depictions of violence.

A spokesperson for Meta said that, per nan company’s Violent and Graphic Content policies, it’s applying a “Mark arsenic Sensitive” informing explanation to footage of nan Kirk shooting, and are age-gating it to users 18 and older. The spokesperson besides said that nan institution has 15,000 group reviewing contented for Meta—though it did not opportunity whether these are labor aliases contractors—and that it does not let videos that glorify, represent, aliases support nan incident aliases perpetrator.

Meta besides states successful its online Transparency Center that it does not let contented of “terrorist attacks, dislike events, multiple-victim unit aliases attempted multiple-victim violence, serial murders, aliases dislike crimes perpetrator-generated contented relating to specified attacks; aliases third-party imagery depicting nan infinitesimal of specified attacks connected visible victims.” Still, nan wide circulated footage of Kirk being shot, for now, is allowable. It will get a informing explanation and beryllium age-gated, but not removed from Meta platforms unless wished to beryllium successful clear usurpation of nan “glorified content” policy.

X tells users that they “may stock schematic media if it is decently labeled, not prominently displayed and is not excessively gory aliases depicting intersexual violence.” The level notes that contented that is “explicitly threatening, inciting, glorifying, aliases expressing desire for violence” is not allowed.

Mahadevan, from nan Poynter Institute, says that he saw nan Kirk shooting video without his consent aggregate times connected X connected Wednesday, likening it to a type of “4Chan turned into a mainstream societal media platform.” (He besides says he opened up Facebook connected Thursday greeting and instantly saw a video of Kirk being shot.)

X did not reply to requests for remark aliases questions astir whether nan Kirk video was considered “excessively gory” by X’s standards.

But X appears to person different contented moderation problem: A fewer hours aft Kirk was pronounced dead, nan AI chatbot Grok, which runs connected X, insisted that Kirk was “fine and progressive arsenic ever.” X did not reply to further questions from WIRED astir Grok’s misinformation astir nan Kirk shooting.

Bluesky has said it’s suspending accounts that promote unit and taking down close-up videos of nan event.

For now, nan videos of Charlie Kirk’s shooting proceed to dispersed online.

“This is each psychologically damaging to our nine successful ways we don’t understand yet,” Mahadevan said. “We’re seeing posts connected X of group saying, ‘Congratulations, you’ve radicalized me.’ And portion of that is because they’re seeing nan video of Kirk being killed. They’re not conscionable reference astir it. They’re really seeing it.”

Additional reporting by Kylie Robison.

Updated: 9/11/2025 4:00 p.m. EST: This communicative has been updated pinch remark from TikTok and to bespeak nan existent organization affiliation of a researcher.