University of Kwazulu-Natal

Kirk Shooting Videos Spread Online Even To Viewers Who Didn T Want To

Bonisiwe Shabane
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kirk shooting videos spread online even to viewers who didn t want to

Just minutes after Charlie Kirk was shot at an event at Utah Valley University last week, videos capturing the moment the bullet struck him began appearing online. They quickly racked up millions of views. "We are not wired as human beings, biologically, historically — we have not evolved in a way that we are capable of processing those types of violent imagery," Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said at a recent press conference. "This is not good for us. It is not good to consume."

For many online, seeing the videos of Kirk's shooting wasn't a choice. The event in Utah was being livestreamed, and thousands of people in the audience had smartphones. Even without searching them out, people were confronted with the graphic footage in their social media feeds — sometimes playing automatically. "Social media and violent imagery often go together these days," said Emerson Brooking, director of strategy and a senior resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab. "This took place where everyone could see it and it was intended that everyone would see it." Images of graphic violence have long circulated online, from propaganda videos made by ISIS showing the executions of hostages to first-person footage posted by mass shooters to scenes of war.

(Disclaimer: Video shows extreme gun violence) In a chilling moment that has since gone viral, bystander footage captured the exact instant conservative figure Charlie Kirk was shot dead during a campus speaking engagement in Utah. The founder of Turning Point USA and a close ally of President Donald Trump was gunned down while addressing a crowd of thousands, sparking a national outcry and raising concerns over escalating political violence. The shooting occurred on Wednesday afternoon at Utah Valley University (UVU) in Orem, just outside Salt Lake City. Kirk was approximately 20 minutes into his talk for the American Comeback Tour, hosted by the local chapter of TPUSA, when a single shot rang out—striking him fatally in the neck. ⚠️⚠️Extreme Violence☣️☣️ (18+) Another angle of the shot that KILLED #CharlieKirk its back side footage A single gunshot rings out mid-debate His team INSTANTLY jump to actionhttps://t.co/8h99yUo9mQ — R J (@rahuljaitley) September 10, 2025

Chaos immediately erupted at the scene, with students and attendees seen scrambling for cover in footage that quickly spread across social media platforms. Emergency services rushed Kirk to a nearby hospital, but the 31-year-old was later pronounced dead. Moments after conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was shot, videos of his assassination reached millions. This is just one example of the alarming spread of violent content on social media. New York Times reporter Sheera Frenkel recently published a piece on this topic. Frenkel joins the show to discuss the phenomenon and the failure of social media companies to regulate the issue.

HARI SREENIVASAN:a Bianna, thanks. Sheera Frenkel, thanks so much for joining us. Just last week within moments of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, we saw videos of that instantly gain so many views on different social media platforms. And I guess the first question, is why? SHEERA FRENKEL: We see this almost every time that there’s a violent incident caught on camera, people want to know what happened, and there’s a kind of a morbid fascination to see it for... If the incident happened in public, if there was a moment of violence that happened in public, you can be sure these days that someone was recording.

And those videos seem to take less and less time to find their way to social media. SREENIVASAN: You know, this people opened up their phone and opened and clicked on an app, and then it was just like — there wasn’t even a choice. It was just there, in their face, it was automatically playing. FRENKEL: I, I think what was so important about what you just said was the word choice. People had to choose to watch this sort of content, even, you know, 15, 20 years ago. You had to navigate to it.

You had to select — you had to make a decision to say, I want to watch something violent and click your way through to that, even in the earliest days of the internet. Traditional news outlets were careful in their coverage of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination to not show graphic images of the event. But if people wanted to see graphic evidence of what happened to him, it was easily available online. Charlie Kirk speaks at Texas A&M University as part of Turning Point USA’s American Comeback Tour on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in College Station, Texas. (Meredith Seaver/College Station Eagle via AP, File) Immediately after Charlie Kirk was shot during a college event in Utah, graphic video of what happened was available almost instantly online, from several angles, in slow-motion and real-time speed.

Millions of people watched — sometimes whether they wanted to or not — as the videos autoplayed on social media platforms. Video was easy to find on X, on Facebook, on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube — even on President Donald Trump’s Truth Social. The platforms, generally, said they were removing at least some of the videos if they violated their policies, for instance if the person was glorifying the killing in any way. In other cases, warning screens were applied to caution people they were about to see graphic content. Two days after Kirk’s death, videos were still easily found on social media, despite calls to remove them. While legacy media were more restrained about showing graphic footage, it was easily available across X and Meta, writes Andrew Griffin

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We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it. Just minutes after Charlie Kirk had been shot in Utah, video of his death was not only easy to find, but for many, unavoidable to watch. Graphic videos of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination continued to spread across social media platforms Thursday, with many companies choosing to put the video behind content warnings rather than taking it down entirely. On YouTube and Meta platforms, videos that showed the moment Kirk was hit by the bullet required users to acknowledge that they were willing to see sensitive content. On other platforms, including X and TikTok, many of the videos remained easily accessible without any warning. The spread of videos depicting violent incidents, like shootings, has been a perennial issue for social media platforms, complicated in recent years by a shift away from aggressive, human-based moderation.

Most companies still have policies either banning or limiting the spread of gory videos. And while the backlash against moderation has generally been led by conservatives, some Republicans have called for action over the video of Kirk’s killing. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said Wednesday that she hoped the video was removed from social media platforms, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., called on X CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok to take down videos of the shooting. FBI agents walk through the courtyard at Utah Valley University at the site of where political activist Charlie Kirk was killed on Sept.

11, 2025, in Orem, Utah. Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images hide caption Just minutes after Charlie Kirk was shot at an event at Utah Valley University last week, videos capturing the moment the bullet struck him began appearing online. They quickly racked up millions of views. "We are not wired as human beings, biologically, historically — we have not evolved in a way that we are capable of processing those types of violent imagery," Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said at a recent press conference.

"This is not good for us. It is not good to consume." For many online, seeing the videos of Kirk's shooting wasn't a choice. The event in Utah was being livestreamed, and thousands of people in the audience had smartphones. Even without searching them out, people were confronted with the graphic footage in their social media feeds — sometimes playing automatically. "Social media and violent imagery often go together these days," said Emerson Brooking, director of strategy and a senior resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab.

"This took place where everyone could see it and it was intended that everyone would see it." Minutes after conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was shot yesterday at a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University, jarring videos of the incident began circulating on apps like TikTok, Instagram, and X. In the immediate aftermath, the majority of the videos viewed by WIRED did not contain content warnings. Many began autoplaying before viewers had the option to consent. And on X, an AI-generated recap of the incident falsely indicated that Kirk had survived the shooting. Researchers tracking the spread of the shooting videos on social media say that major social platforms are falling short in enforcing their own content moderation rules, at a moment when political tensions and violence...

And the video of Kirk being fatally shot is somehow falling into a policy loophole, threading the needle between allowable “graphic content” and the category of “glorified violence” that violates platform rules. “It’s unbelievable how some of these videos are still up. And with the way this stuff spreads, it is absolutely impossible to take down or add warnings to all of these horrific videos if you don’t have a robust trust and safety program,” says... Over the past two years, social platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram have scaled back their content moderation efforts—in some cases eliminating the work of human moderators who previously acted as a crucial... Many platforms use AI tools to try to spot and label potentially damaging video content, but the companies don’t always share specifics about how these tools are deployed. The videos of Kirk being shot show him sitting on a stool answering questions from students and other spectators.

The moments before, during, and after he was killed were captured on smartphones and shared quickly on social media. Many videos show Kirk suddenly recoiling, having been shot, and blood pouring from the left side of his neck. Legal. Deadly. Twice as lethal as fentanyl. And still on shelves.

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