eSafety has received complaints about school-aged children accessing Charlie Kirk shooting videos on social media
Social media giants face an urgent “whack-a-mole” battle to remove Charlie Kirk shooting footage as Australian children access violent content.
Australia’s online safety watchdog has received “multiple complaints” about young kids being able to access graphic footage of Charlie Kirk’s assassination on popular social media platforms.
The eSafety Commission has been notified about examples of ”school-age children” accessing “unedited video footage” of the fatal shooting at Utah Valley University on Thursday.
A spokesman said eSafety was “currently assessing the material and working collaboratively with platforms to inform them of its presence”.
“At least one platform has subsequently removed instances of the material voluntarily,” he said.
The spokesman said Australians who come across graphic content online were encouraged to report it rather than share it further, “even if this is to alert others to the danger”.
“Avoiding further sharing will help limit the spread of such material and minimise the harm it causes, particularly to children and young people,” he said.
Graphic footage of the Utah shooting was found on platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
A basic search using an over-18 account on Instagram, which is owned by Meta, instantly produced dozens of close-up and unedited videos of the incident.
Similar searches on YouTube prioritised news clips where the graphic content was censored, while on TikTok some videos had content warnings that also prevented auto-play though others did not.
An Albanese government spokesman said online platforms had a “responsibility to protect their users by quickly removing or restricting illegal harmful content”.
“There is no place for harmful and violent content to be accessible for children online, which is what the government’s social media minimum age requirements will help prevent,” he said.
A YouTube spokeswoman said the company was “closely monitoring our platform and prominently elevating news content on the homepage, in search and in recommendations to help people stay informed”.
Some graphic content on YouTube has been removed, while other videos showing the attack have been age-restricted with a warning applied.
Meta was contacted for comment.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she woke at 6.30am Australian time to hear the news of the shooting and “galvanised the crew” to start liaising with tech companies to pull down any graphic videos.
“By 7.30am it was all over Instagram and X and TikTok. It was everywhere. We’re doing what we usually do, which is work with all the platforms to make sure that they’re capturing it and preventing it from being uploaded.
“But it will be a big job for them. They’ll be playing a big game of whack-a-mole.”
Platforms have historically struggled to limit the spread of violent content, such as in 2019 when the Christchurch mosque attack was live-streamed on Facebook.
Meta then removed some 1.5 million copies of the video in the first 24 hours of the attack, though it continued to be re-uploaded and shared.
In 2024, eSafety asked X to hide posts of the Wakeley church stabbing attack, and sought a federal court order to force the platform to comply.
Ultimately the regulator abandoned its legal fight and agreed with the social media firm to end a judicial review of its orders.
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Originally published as eSafety has received complaints about school-aged children accessing Charlie Kirk shooting videos on social media
