>I'm imagining a 16 year old coming across it, and wondering how they process it.

I saw ISIS propaganda videos at around the age of 16. The ones where they kill people in various ways. Nothing else in life has made me disgusted by other people as much as those videos did. I'm reminded of the videos when I read about ISIS. It strengthens my view that ISIS is a group that needs to be fought.

I'm curious, on what sites/services did you find the video so prevalent it was hard to avoid?

Clips were autoplaying in the live updates tab of twitter.

I'm a heavy user of the Twitter web and iPhone clients, and I'm not sure what you mean by "live updates" tab. Is that something in TweetDeck or another client?

If you (or parent poster ~TheTruth1234) found this unwanted, wouldn't unfollowing or blocking the source accounts be an adequate remedy?

(It is a embarrassing mess, but par for Twitter's lackadaisical approach software quality, that Twitter web often ignores their own settings' "don't autoplay" toggle, and has for many months.)

If you need to ask me that ... I congratulate you on your restrained use of social media.

I honestly consider myself somebody who uses social media perhaps too much, and yet I still didn't see anything like a video at all - I don't know if it's a social media bubble, or perhaps a feature of the country I'm in. I saw the news that the attack had happened almost instantly, but not even on places like reddit did I see videos of the event.

Are you saying that the video was being posted to social media as "shock videos" (ie. the viewer did not know that it was violent before watching it)? If so, why is censorship needed, rather than a NSFW/NSFL label?

I'm saying the video was readily available as "news".

I don't care how it's dealt with, but I prefer it not to be a part of my regular online diet.

So, how does having it be "available as 'news'", behind an intentional click or two for those who feel they want or even "need" to know, affect your online diet?

Can't you just pass it over without clicking, like with the hundreds/thousands of other offered-but-unwanted links one encounters in daily web/app usage?

"Intentional" ....

It was beneath the top trending hashtag on twitter. Initially, it was absolutely not obvious what the video was that kept appearing. Sometimes it would auto play.

Obviously rapidly it became clear what was going on ... and then it was a basic game to escape ... and then to just switch off social media.

Honestly ... there are some f@cking weird questions asked about this subject on HN.

Do you mind if I ask your age and general location? I'm really curious.

Thanks for the appreciation, but still wondering which specific sites/services presented you with images/video you didn't want to see.

(I'm a pretty heavy user of social media, especially Twitter & Facebook, but as none of my friends/followees/groups posted raw video, I only saw the headlines and generic 'aftermath' photos common on mainstream news sites.)

In the future, would you please add an additional sentence to comments like this one where you answer the question?

You think you understand, but until you really see something or someone go from living and breath to abruptly dead, you don't.

As for the 16 year old, it wasn't long ago that by 16 you'd have seen a few of your siblings and friends succumbed to illness or accident.

Death used to be part of life and we dealt with it.

I'm not saying we need to be in denial of death. I'm well versed, thanks.

But that doesn't mean I need or want to tune into the live-action progress of a disgusting, terrorist attack.

And I'm not saying it should be played in time square. But hiding it from the "normal" parts of the internet doesn't do anyone any favors.

What about the fact the he wanted the video viewed and his crap to be read? Not participating in something he wants is (another) motivation for avoiding his creations.

He's a terrorist, he intended to terrorize. Looking him in the eye and telling him to fuck off is the best thing you can do.

Should we assume that any view plays into the aims of the attack, or is there a way to view this footage that thwarts its goals? If there is a way, what can we do to increase the number of people who use it (given that they view the footage at all?)

If I open my browser, pop on to twitter, and the video is right there waiting under the top trending topic ... it might as well be Time Square.

So click "hide" and carry on.

Or Twitter can implement a "do not autoplay sensitive content" feature.

I wish they didn't autoplay anything.

I think you can turn that off in your account settings, actually (it may be called something like "data saver" or the like)

The fact that browsers, websites, and apps autoplay video, often with sound, doesn't help.

I've posted a ... friendly notice to Google about this.

A million times this.

Every public interaction you make is an excuse for Facebook to shove it in the face of your friends. If you see this and angry-like it, it pops up on a few hundred more feeds. Rinse, repeat. Viral.

Facebook is particularly bad because their moderation team appears to be staffed exclusively by a pile of libertarian twelve year olds. I've flagged local drug sales, sexually explicit content (no, not casual or functional nudity) many times and had my flags rejected.

Why do you think the reaction would be any different from any violent action movie? If you don’t know the context, you also don’t know that those people actually died.

I did know the context.

Then it cannot be “inadvertent exposure”.