LiveLeak is shutting down this week, it has been nearly 15 years since October 2006 when the founders of a popular gore portal launched this video hosting service aimed at hosting real, often all-too-real images. A sort of YouTube where violent, bloody, disgusting, and disturbing graphic material was allowed uncensored.
It has gained popularity when it was barely a year old, after hosting the unauthorized filming of Saddam Hussein’s execution. A year later, its name was brought back into the public eye following the publication of the murder by a jihadist group of American journalist James Foley, after which the portal decided to ban future ISIS beheading videos.
LiveLeak is closed after being online for 15 years
In recent years, LiveLeak was receiving between 16 million and 20 million unique monthly views.
LiveLeak shuts down. They are redirecting users to a new portal called Itemfix, run by the same people, which does explicitly prohibits both “excessive violence” and “gory content” and is, they explain, a site for creativity and fun.
Hayden Hewitt, one of the co-founders of LiveLeak, assures in a brief text linked in Itemfix that “The world has changed a lot over these last few years, the Internet alongside it, and we as people.”
“Although it’s an overused analogy the last fifteen years have been an insane rollercoaster for all involved. Highs, lows, and some rather worrying bits where it felt like we were upside down. The thing is, it’s never been less than exhilarating, challenging and something we were all fully committed to. Nothing lasts forever though and – as we did all those years ago – we felt LiveLeak had achieved all that it could and it was time for us to try something new and exciting,” he adds.
