Melbourne teen gangs brandish knives, swords and guns on Meta-owned Instagram in dark trend.

Disturbing pictures of youth crime gangs brandishing knives, swords and guns are being posted on Meta-owned Instagram, a dark trend experts say is fuelling the state’s youth crime crisis.

Melbourne youth gang members are generating a dark cult following by boasting about their postcode’s authority to wage war on rivals in nearby suburbs on Instagram.

The Saturday Herald Sun can reveal the alarming new trend in which youth gangs share photos of deadly weapons under usernames with their postcodes on the Meta-owned social media platform.

Leading criminal experts have also slammed social media companies, urging them to remove harmful content which allows young criminals to post their sickening crimes online.

The Instagram pages – which are Melbourne-based – feature hundreds of disturbing images showing teens brandishing machetes, swords, knives and imitation firearms.

In one Instagram post, two youths from Warragul, who openly brag about their postcode in their profile’s username, show them posing up with swords and knives, while their faces remain covered in a bid to evade authorities.

The account also shows the teens bragging about stealing cars, with photos of several luxury car keys and videos of them speeding at 200km/h on the profile.

Melbourne teens openly brandish deadly weapons on Instagram. Source: Instagram

Instagram posts are glamorising deadly weapons. Picture: Instagram

On another profile, a recent video shows a youth gang member from Frankston holding a large sword alongside an emoji of two knives, while drill rap music plays in the background.

On separate profiles, the teens boast about being “suspects from 77” – the Cranbourne postcode — with a collage showing their alleged crimes.

They include stolen cars, weapons, screenshots of police air wing tracking them and mocking media and police who report on their crimes.

Dr Tim Watson-Munro, one of the country’s leading criminal psychologists, said Instagram needed to “urgently” remove harmful posts showing deadly and dangerous weapons.

“This is extremely concerning — it’s shameless behaviour where these teens think it’s really cool to boast about their behaviour on social media,” Dr Watson-Munro said.

“Social media companies are not doing enough. Meta seems to be indifferent to the problem and we’re creating a contagion of bad behaviour,” he said.

Dr Watson-Munro said he was concerned about the growing number of Victorian youth gang members using their postcodes in usernames.

“There needs to be greater intervention with these youths … all these social media companies are interested in is revenue and it’s going to take a big push from the government to get this type of material removed,” he said.

Social media experts says posts like this need to be removed. Source: Instagram

A Melbourne post showing off an illegal handgun. Source: Instagram

Criminologist Dr Terry Goldsworthy, who spent almost 30 years in the police force, said social media companies needed to remove content that glorified violence.

“For most of the major social media companies, this type of content often contravenes the platforms’ own rules, and eSafety expects consistent and effective enforcement of these policies,” he said.

“In Queensland if you now put up social media posts related to certain crimes, it becomes a circumstance of aggravation, so there’s additional punishment,” Dr Goldsworthy said.

“You would think that anything that shows the use of weapons would be flagged immediately and taken down so they can’t be used to promote violence.”

An eSafety Commissioner spokesman said social media companies needed to “do more and do better” to enforce their terms of service including to deter, detect and remove content promoting, crime or violence on their platforms.

A Victoria Police spokesman said while young offenders often boast about their crimes online, it was too simplistic to view social media as the root of the problem.

“Young people become involved in crime for a range of reasons including substance abuse, mental health, family violence and disengagement from family, education, and community,” the spokesman said.

“When young people commit serious and violent crimes, we will have no hesitation in bringing them before the courts.

“In the past year alone, police have made almost 5500 arrests as part of our two major operations targeting youth offenders – Alliance and Trinity.”

An eSafety Commissioner spokesman said social media companies needed to “do more and do better” to enforce their terms of service including to deter, detect and remove content promoting, crime or violence on their platforms.

“For most of the major social media companies, this type of content often contravenes the platforms’ own rules, and eSafety expects consistent and effective enforcement of these policies,” he said.