Twitter disables autocomplete function amid suggestions for horrific videos of mass shooting, animal torture: Report

Twitter has disabled the autocomplete function in its search bar after users reported that the app started to recommend horrifying videos of animal abuse and mass shooting.

Horrifying and ghastly videos of mass shooting in Allen, Texas were visible at the top of the results in Twitter’s search, according to BBC.

A graphic video of children killed in the attack circulated on the platform for hours before being removed. It was easy for anyone looking up the keyword for information on the platform to come across the video.

Even though the video is now deleted, the footage which includes one of the dead shooter, still appears when searching for information on Allen.

Searching for ‘dog’ suggested ‘dog screwdriver video’ and ‘kittens’ suggested ‘kittens in a blender’. Searching for ‘wagner’ would suggest ‘wagner hammer execution’ and ‘texas’ would suggest ‘texas mall video.’

Twitter fixed the problem by simply disabling the autocomplete function.

Autocompleting search terms are available in most of the online search bar these days. Google often knows what you want to ask before you have even finished typing your questions.

Twitter was a cruder version of it but last week users began to notice gross irregularities in its autocomplete function. Typing in even the simplest words like Cat, Dog or Texas began to return autocomplete suggestions for violent and gore content.

Amarnath Amarasingam, an expert at Queen’s University in Toronto, told the BBC that the rise in shocking and violent content on the social-media site could be attributed to the company’s lack of employees to flag such content.

Amarasingam suggested that Twitter no longer had the required staff to remove content that violates its policy or even warn users about graphic content.

Recently, Elon Musk also tweeted that Twitter Blue Verified subscribers can now upload 2 hours of videos (8GB)

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