TikTok is ‘aggressively eradicating’ movies selling an Osama bin Laden manifesto

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 an announcement on X (previously Twitter), TikTok says it’s “proactively and aggressively eradicating this content material and investigating the way it bought onto our platform.”

Dozens of movies in regards to the manifesto, titled “Letter to America,” have surfaced on TikTok over the previous a number of days, with CNN reporting the subject amassed “no less than” 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. Nevertheless, some creators are actually making an attempt to use that criticism to the US authorities’s response to the continued Israel-Hamas struggle.

One video, which has since been faraway from TikTok, had a textual content overlay saying “making an attempt to return to life as regular after studying Osama Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ and realizing the whole lot we realized in regards to the Center East, 9/11, and ‘terrorism’ was a lie.”

TikTok now not reveals any outcomes whenever you try to 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 material selling this letter clearly violates our guidelines on supporting any type of terrorism,” TikTok writes on X. “This isn’t distinctive to TikTok and has appeared throughout a number of platforms and the media.” TikTok provides the variety of movies posted on the subject is “small and reviews 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 enable “inaccurate, deceptive, or false content material that will trigger important hurt to people or society, no matter intent.”

The Israel-Hamas struggle has been an enormous check for TikTok, and the platform will solely proceed to face stress to strictly average its content material, particularly since practically one-third of younger adults use TikTok to get their information.