The same report cites an academic study by Sue Tait that attempts to explain the enduring popularity of such violent and gory content. A 2019 report from The New York Times noted 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. LiveLeak attracted sizable traffic, proof of the enduring appeal of its shocking contentĪlthough the site’s content likely stopped it from reaching the prominence of other video hosts, it still attracted sizable numbers of viewers. Similarly, the site chose not to host videos of the 2019 Christchurch shootings, stating in another blog post that LiveLeak never had a “show everything” policy, and that hosting the video would only give the shooter what he wanted: more attention. “We know they do not find support here on LL and that condemnation is virtually universal but there is no reason at all to show more.” “We’ve shown the world the true horror of this form of execution more than once in the past and we cannot find any compelling reason to even be thought of as promoting the actions of this group,” said a blog post. But soon after the site’s owners announced it would host no future beheading videos created by ISIS. In 2014 it attracted significant attention (and traffic) for hosting a video of the beheading of US journalist James Foley by terror group ISIS. ĭespite this, the site often changed its policies concerning controversial footage. “We have to take a stance of saying ‘look all this is happening, this is real life, this is going on, we’re going to show it,’” he told BBC News. When the site attracted controversy in the UK for hosting footage of children fighting, for example, Hewitt defended sharing the videos as a form of bearing witness. Official statements from those involved sometimes defended its content in terms of newsworthiness or truth-telling.
LiveLeak, with its tagline of “Redefining the Media,” ostensibly added some nuance to this brutish appeal. A sinister doppelgänger to sites like YouTube, LiveLeak was founded in 2006 and grew out of a culture of early internet “shock sites” like Ogrish,, and BestGore: websites that hosted violent and pornographic content with the express aim of disgusting visitors. LiveLeak has been a mainstay of internet culture for many years, its name synonymous with footage of murder, terrorism, and everyday incidents of crime and violence. LiveLeak grew out of the “shock sites” of the early internet
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