TikTok is taking motion towards content material selling the manifesto Osama bin Laden wrote discussing his supposed motivations for the 9/11 terrorist assaults. In a press release on X (previously Twitter), TikTok says it’s “proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.”
Dozens of movies concerning the manifesto, titled “Letter to America,” have surfaced on TikTok over the previous a number of days, with CNN reporting the subject amassed “at least” 14 million views by Thursday. Initially printed in 2002, the manifesto criticizes the US authorities’s presence within the Center East and assist of Israel. Nonetheless, some creators are actually making an attempt to use that criticism to the US authorities’s response to the continuing Israel-Hamas struggle.
One video, which has since been faraway from TikTok, had a textual content overlay saying “trying to go back to life as normal after reading Osama Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ and realizing everything we learned about the Middle East, 9/11, and ‘terrorism’ was a lie.”
TikTok not exhibits any outcomes once you try and seek for “Letter to America,” and the Guardian, which printed a translated model of the letter in 2002, took it down on Wednesday after it started circulating on the platform. When it was first printed, the Guardian mentioned the letter was circulated amongst “British Islamic extremists.”
“Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,” TikTok writes on X. “This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media.” TikTok provides the variety of movies posted on the subject is “small and reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate.”
Earlier this week, TikTok pushed again on claims it was lenient on pro-Palestinian content material, claiming each Instagram and Fb additionally had extra posts tagged with #FreePalestine than #standwithIsrael. The platform says it additionally doesn’t permit “inaccurate, misleading, or false content that may cause significant harm to individuals or society, regardless of intent.”
The Israel-Hamas struggle has been an enormous check for TikTok, and the platform will solely proceed to face strain to strictly reasonable its content material, particularly since almost one-third of younger adults use TikTok to get their information.