LiveLeak, a video site known for hosting gruesome footage that mainstream rivals would not touch, has now shut down after 15 years in operation.
In its place is ItemFix, a site that bans users from uploading media containing excessive gory content or violence.
LiveLeak Shuts Down
In a blog post, LiveLeak founder Hayden Hewitt did not give a reason for the site’s closure. He only said that the world had changed a lot over the last few years, the Internet alongside it, and the society too.
In a video posted on his YouTube channel Trigger Warning, Hewitt offered no further details but said that maintaining LiveLeak had become a struggle and that he and his team just did not have it in them to carry on.
Hewitt expressed his sentiments saying everything is different now and everything moves on, to his dismay.
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LiveLeak has been a mainstay of internet culture for many years, its name is synonymous with footage of terrorism, murder, and everyday incidents of violence and crime.
A sinister site, LiveLeak was founded in 2006 and grew out of a culture of early internet shock sites like Ogrish, Rotten.com, and BestGore, websites that hosted violent and inappropriate content with the aim to disgust visitors.
LiveLeak Controversy
LiveLeak, with its tagline of “Redefining the Media,” added some nuance to its appeal. Official statements from those involved sometimes defended its content in terms of newsworthiness or truth-telling.
When the site attracted controversy in the UK for hosting footage of children fighting, Hewitt defended sharing the videos as a form of bearing witness. He told BBC News that they have to take a stance of saying what happens in real life, what exactly is going on, and they are going to show it.
Despite this, the site usually changed its policies concerning controversial footage. In 2014, it attracted significant attention and traffic for hosting a video of the beheading of US journalist James Foley by the terrorist group ISIS. But after the site’s owners announced it would host no future beheading videos created by ISIS.
In a blog post, Hewitt wrote that they have shown the world the true horror of this form of execution more than once in the past and they can’t find any compelling reason to even be thought of as promoting the actions of this group.
Hewitt defended their decision to show the video and implied that LiveLeaks condemns what happened. After that, they stopped showing those types of videos.
Similarly, the site chose not to host videos of the 2019 Christchurch shootings, stating in a separate blog post that LiveLeak never had a “show everything” policy, and that hosting the video would only give the shooter what he wanted, which is more attention.
Even though the site’s content likely stopped it from reaching the prominence of other video hosts, it still attracted sizable numbers of viewers.
A report from The New York Times in 2019 notes that web tracking firm Alexa ranked it as the 695th most popular website in the world, putting it roughly on a par with mainstream sites like The Onion and Jezebel.
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