After Charlie Kirk was murdered at Utah Valley University, graphic videos of the right-wing provocateur’s assassination went viral on every major social media platform. It’s not surprising that such violent footage quickly spread — especially around a killing as high-profile as Kirk’s. What’s unusual, however, is how long those videos have been allowed to stay up.

Search Kirk’s name on Instagram right now, and for every three videos of him “owning” a college student in a debate, there’s at least one of him bleeding out. Search “Charlie Kirk shooting,” and your feed will be inundated with videos of the incident. This was not always the case. After a gunman livestreamed his attack at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, Meta said it took down 1.2 million versions of the video before users could upload them to the platform. The Southern Poverty Law Center also tracked uploads of videos after mass shootings in Christchurch; Halle, Germany; and Buffalo, New York, and found a dramatic decrease after the seventh day of each of those shootings.

Owners of social media companies like Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube have traditionally responded much faster to the proliferation of such graphic violence on their platforms, at least in the West. (Internet users in places where these platforms dedicate less resources to moderation like Gaza or Tigray are all too familiar with the kind of deluge of gore American users were subject to these past few weeks.)

Lawmakers including Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have called on the platforms to delete the videos of Kirk’s gruesome assassination.

“He has a family, young children, and no one should be forced to relive this tragedy online. These are not the only........

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