TikTok announced today that it was removing videos that have popped up on the platform in which users of various ages and ethnicities promote Osama bin Laden‘s “Letter to America,” which he had written to justify the attacks on 9/11. “Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,” TikTok said in a message posted on X/Twitter. “We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.” The platform, however, disputed the extent to which the videos went viral, calling reports of them trending as “inaccurate.” “This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media,” the company said.
TikTok referred to a post from journalist Yashar Ali, who on Wednesday alerted the presence of the videos on the platform. “The TikToks are from people of all ages, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds.
Many of them say that reading the letter has opened their eyes, and they’ll never see geopolitical matters the same way again,” Ali wrote.
Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism. We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.
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