Instagram and TikTok cracked down on posts promoting Osama bin Laden’s letter justifying the 9/11 attacks after they went viral Wednesday evening.
Instagram hid the hashtag #LetterToAmerica, while TikTok asserted the posts broke its rules against supporting terrorism and began removing them on Thursday.
“Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,” TikTok stated. “We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.”
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. The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our… https://t.co/n9Zo7l94r2
— TikTok Policy (@TikTokPolicy) November 16, 2023
Videos urging people to read bin Laden’s “Letter to America” and promoting his perception of the U.S. gained many thousands of views, according to Semafor.
The Guardian removed the letter from its website on Wednesday after publishing it in 2002.
“Now trending on social media (especially TikTok) people saying that after reading Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America,’ they now understand terrorism is a legitimate method of resistance against ‘oppression’ and America deserved to be attacked [on] 9/11,” Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida posted on X.
TikTok has recently faced criticism due to anti-Israel content proliferating on the platform during the Israel-Hamas War, and because of its connections to the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok, Instagram and Meta did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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