TikTok Is ‘Aggressively’ Scrubbing Videos Praising Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’
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TikTok is in the process of taking down videos on its platform that promote Osama Bin Laden’s letter justifying the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, with the tech company saying that the content “clearly violates” platform rules against “supporting any form of terrorism.” In a statement to X on Thursday, TikTok said it was “proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.” The company also disputed earlier reports that the letter had become a viral trend on the platform, saying that the actual number of videos made about it on TikTok had been “small,” though it did not provide specific data. The abrupt surge of interest in the letter, which was also discussed this week by users on other social media platforms, including Instagram and X, led The Guardian to yank a copy of the full translated letter it published in 2002. The British newspaper said that the decision had been made “to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualized it instead.”