(TNND) — Charlie Kirk's assassination has reignited concerns that the powerful microphone of social media is being misused to spread hate and political division.

“Social media reacted to Charlie Kirk's assassination the way social media reacts to everything: over the top, loudly and representing a minority of how people think,” said Peter Loge, the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Kirk’s public killing was a “watershed in American history” during a news conference Friday, during which authorities announced the arrest of the alleged shooter.

“The question is what kind of watershed, and that, that chapter remains to be written,” the Republican governor said. “Is this the end of a dark chapter in our history or the beginning of a darker chapter in our history?"

The New York Times analyzed social media activity and found the term “civil war” was mentioned on X around 340,000 times on Wednesday and Thursday combined, compared to a daily average of around 18,000 times in recent months.

“The left and their policies are leading America into a civil war. And they want it,” Wisconsin Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden said on his X account. “Just like the democrat party wanted our 1st civil war. The gloves are off. This I will Defend.”

Van Orden has also been sharing a string of posts from people making insensitive or even celebratory remarks about Kirk’s death.

Van Orden shared dozens of examples Friday alone, most of the vitriol he was calling out appearing to come from private citizens, not politicians.

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Meanwhile, high-profile Democrats, such as former President Barack Obama and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, condemned the killing of the popular right-wing influencer and activist.

Obama wrote that "this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy."

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“The point of democracy is we shout, we don't shoot,” Loge said. “The moment the shooting starts, democracy is failing.”

Andrew Selepak, a social media expert who teaches at the University of Florida, said that it was horrible, though not shocking, that some social media users celebrated the death of a 31-year-old father of two, simply because they disagreed with his political views.

And Selepak said there are people from both sides of the political aisle who are using this tragedy to bring attention to themselves or their cause.

Loge said political scientists talk about “policy windows” opening, which might be happening now in the eyes of some social media users.

“If you have a policy that you want to promote, for example on gun control or law enforcement, if something big happens that involves guns and law enforcement, you say, ‘Aha, this is a policy window. Now everyone's paying attention to my thing,’” Loge said.

Selepak said Kirk’s death and the recent video of a woman’s brutal stabbing aboard a train in North Carolina both generated enormous attention over social media.

In both cases, uncensored video made the rounds online.

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The National News Desk reached out to some social media companies to learn how they’re handling the uncensored video of Kirk’s death.

"We are saddened by the assassination of Charlie Kirk and send our deepest condolences to his wife Erika, their two young children, and their family and friends,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement via email. “These horrific violent acts have no place in our society. We remain committed to proactively enforcing our Community Guidelines and have implemented additional safeguards to prevent people from unexpectedly viewing footage that violates our rules."

TikTok doesn’t allow “gory, gruesome, disturbing, or extremely violent content.”

And graphic content that meets certain thresholds is restricted to those 18 years and older and won’t show up in the app’s “For You” feed.

A representative of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, told TNND the “mark as sensitive” warning label is being applied to footage of the shooting. And the video is being blocked for users under 18.

Meta also prohibits content that glorifies the killing or celebrates the shooter.

A YouTube spokesperson said the platform is trying to balance the public interest in a major news event while shielding users from highly graphic content.

YouTube is removing some graphic content related to the death of Kirk, particularly if it does not provide sufficient context for viewers.

Some content will be age-restricted.

Some age-restricted content on YouTube may also include a warning and the video won’t autoplay until the user clicks "continue."

A Snap spokesperson said they are “working to proactively detect and remove any content that depicts this tragedy.”

Should social media companies allow users to share the uncensored video of Kirk’s death?

“One of the problems I think that social media companies have now is they've just, to some extent, gotten too big,” Selepak said. “Something like Facebook, with 3 billion users, an event like this, especially an American event of a prominent figure, it's kind of hard to get all of it taken down. Then you add the fact that some of these companies have kind of cut down on their moderators, trying to use AI instead.”

Selepak said we may be “hitting an inflection point in society” and social media.

“And what do we really want to be consuming on social media? And just how great is the damage for not just young people, in this case, but all of us to become desensitized to something like this?” he said.

Loge said a lot of what filled social media feeds in the wake of Kirk’s death was “angry and emotional and anti-democratic.”

But it doesn’t have to be.

“Even if a lot of what's on social media is noisy and angry, a handful of people can be calm and encourage calm,” Loge said. “Political scientists have long found that people listen to political elites. They follow their political leaders. And if political leaders say violence is wrong, this is wrong, people will tend to think that violence is wrong.”