What might it mean for one to consume media that shows other humans suffering or in agonizing pain? What might be the ethical or social significance of becoming a spectator to calamity, to anguish or even to death? For whom and to what end does man choose to look under the veil of death and stare directly upon its cold face? These are the cutting, incisive questions that Susan Sontag proffered up in her seminal essay, “Regarding the Pain of Others,” in which she examined humanity’s relationship to visual and artistic representations of violence. And while this masterwork of hers was published nearly two decades ago, these framing questions might just be the right ones to ask in our present moment. 

This feeling of relevancy comes, of course, in the wake of the reality that millions of people last week watched on social media, either willingly or unwillingly, one of the dozens of videos that showed the brutal killing of Charlie Kirk in shocking detail and clarity. The following editorial is not here to ask questions about the contextual dynamics and sociopolitical afterlifes of this assassination, but rather question the proliferation of its gore and horror online. In other words, should social media have allowed people to watch it? Or, perhaps more broadly, should the general public be allowed to interact online with any of the numerous available videos that depict real people torn apart by bullets and knives, disfigured by disaster and war or victimized by systemic violence and hate?

On the one hand, watching any sort of gory video is bound to have a whole host of detrimental consequences for everyone involved. Perhaps most intuitive amongst these consequences is the fact that witnessing graphic violence has a profound capacity to traumatize viewers, potentially leaving individuals with deeply anti-social impulses (i.e., an inability to feel safe in any sort of public setting) as well as lasting sleep problems, behavioral changes, anxiety or headaches as a result of their inability to “unsee” or “not picture” the explicit gore they have just witnessed. However, there is also an element to which the loved ones of the victims involved in the violent incident may be traumatized by its proliferation online. Not only do they run the risk of coming across clear and vivid depictions of the suffering and dehumanization their family member or close friend, but they simultaneously have to deal with the painful and potentially humiliating reality that the public has the unfettered ability to voyeuristically rewatch the final, often violent, moments of their loved one’s life whenever they so choose. And, of course, it must also be noted that witnessing violence online often only begets more violence, as engagement with the gory and dehumanizing not only de-sensitizes individuals to the very real and very harmful consequences of violent acts, but also potentially encourages online spectators to commit atrocities of their own — either in the name of capturing similar levels of social media glory or for the purpose of retaliation.

However, one cannot simply make the blanket statement that the proliferation of such graphic media only has negative consequences, as there is indeed something to be said about the manner in which graphic and violent videos have purpose in raising awareness about human rights issues. In other words, to see a video or picture of violence and suffering is to, almost inherently, be forced to recognize its existence. Take, for instance, the significance of the terrible images coming out of the genocide currently unfolding in Gaza. As hard as it may be to gaze upon a body that has been torn to shreds by bullets and shrapnel, as nauseating as it is to look at children reduced to skin and bones by a manufactured famine, the fact that these images can appear in front of a viewer renders it impossible for one to ignore the Gazans’ suffering or to wistfully push it away into the realm of the abstract. Instead, the Gazan plight, staring directly at you in all its unfathomable horror and ghastliness, becomes an issue of personal substance — an issue where passive neutrality becomes an impossibility and succumbs to action.

However, even after fully considering these divergent viewpoints, the initial question still remains: how should social media companies, or perhaps even legislators, proceed when it comes to the issue of allowing the public to proliferate graphic and violent content? It is the opinion of this Editorial Board of The Fordham Ram that while there is ultimately no easy or clear answer to such a complex question, there nevertheless appears to be a need to fix the current laissez-faire approach to content moderation.

To return once again to the example that opened this article — that of Charlie Kirk’s assassination — it is immediately apparent, and perhaps morally intuitive, that nobody should have been forced to watch his brutal death because of the shortcomings of a system that often allows videos to “autoplay” without user consent and that uses automated systems which intentionally work to “catch less bad stuff.” The trauma generated from seeing his insanely violent death in high definition and from a dozen different angles is simply not worth any benefit it may bring to the public good. And while there certainly must be room for nuanced approaches to moderation in situations pertaining to the proliferation of the images of mass human rights violations, at the end of the day, it is apparent that we need to move away from the current “post-content-moderation” world.