Osama bin Laden’s hate-filled letter goes viral prompting TikTok to remove it

New York: TikTok is removing videos that promote Osama bin Laden’s letter justifying the September 11 attacks against the US, saying that the user-generated content clearly violates its rules on not “supporting any form of terrorism”.

“We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform,” TikTok said in a post on X.

TikTok, already facing scrutiny from US politicians over ties to China, said the videos quoting the late al-Qaeda founder were not unique to it and had also appeared on other social media websites.

The terror group’s then leader claimed Jews controlled American affairs, labelled AIDS a “Satanic American Invention”, and condemned the creation and existence of Israel.

One TikTok user said: “I need everyone to stop what they’re doing right now and go read – it’s literally two pages – go read ‘A Letter to America’. Come back here and let me know what you think. Because I feel like I’m going through an existential crisis right now, and a lot of people are. So I just need someone else to be feeling this too.”

New Jersey Representative Josh Gottheimer said the videos showed that TikTok was “pushing pro-terrorist propaganda to influence Americans,” adding that the platform should either be banned or sold to an American company.

Social media users rediscovered Bin Laden’s “Letter to America” – translated and published by the Observer in 2002 – amid heated online debate over Israel’s war against Hamas.

The British newspaper on Wednesday removed the full text of the letter, saying that the transcript had been shared on social media “without the full context” and that it was now directing readers instead to “the news article that originally contextualised it”.