TikTok removes videos promoting Osama Bin Laden's “Letter to America” that justified the 9/11 attacks, but calls reports that they were trending “inaccurate”

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Context & Ripple Effects

TikTok had already formalized rules banning content that glorifies terrorism in its global content-moderation policy. Its removal of videos promoting Bin Laden's letter is therefore an enforcement action within an existing policy arc, not a newly disclosed rule.

The dispute over whether the material was trending matters because platform enforcement is judged not only by removals, but by whether distribution systems amplified prohibited content before intervention. Earlier platforms had likewise moved to remove material tied to extremist figures, including YouTube's broad removal of Anwar al-Awlaki videos.

First-order effects

TikTok removes the identified videos, cutting off access to posts that promote a document justifying the 9/11 attacks.
TikTok publicly contests the characterization that the videos were trending, separating its enforcement decision from claims about the scale of distribution.

Second-order effects

The episode raises the operational burden on TikTok to demonstrate that terrorist-content rules cover both explicit praise and promotional reframing of extremist material.
Rival platforms face renewed scrutiny over whether their moderation and recommendation systems can distinguish discussion of extremist texts from content promoting them.

Third-order effects

If such incidents recur, content moderation will increasingly be evaluated as a distribution-governance problem: platforms will be pressed to account for both what they remove and how widely it traveled.
The boundary between legitimate historical or political discussion and promotion of extremist ideology is likely to remain a central, difficult enforcement line across major platforms.

The trend: Platforms are moving from publishing broad safety rules toward sustained scrutiny of how enforcement and recommendation interact around harmful political and extremist content.

Discussion

@cwarzel Charlie Warzel on threads
A tough thing about the internet right now is that it's incredibly hard to like check out any claim of something going viral (especially if time has passed). I've been trying to get a sense of just how viral the Bin Laden letter stuff was on TikTok and I've seen a couple example…
@drewharwell.com Drew Harwell on bluesky
New on the bin Laden letter: — * 274 TikTok videos with 1.8M views on Tues/Weds. (#skincare gets 252M a day.) Not viral, marginal, until ... * X thread, now with 30M views, made it blow up — * Guardian backfired; terrorist “ravings” became “forbidden knowledge” — www.was…
@tiktokpolicy @tiktokpolicy on x
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...
@yashar Yashar Ali on x
Over the past 24 hours, thousands of TikToks (at least) have been posted where people share how they just read Bin Laden's infamous “Letter to America,” in which he explained why he attacked the United States. The TikToks are from people of all ages, races, ethnicities, and... [v…
@broderick Ryan Broderick on x
I spent some time looking into the claim that Bin Laden's “Letter to America” went viral on TikTok. And, after finding some of the videos in this supercut and lining it up with Know Your Meme's timeline, I'm pretty confident saying this tweet is actually what made it “go viral”.
@janelytv Jane Lytvynenko on x
This trend has telltale signs that further investigation is needed. The videos sound similar, some of the wording is nearly identical. It's possible that this is organic, but it's equally possible that it began as a deliberate trend manipulation campaign. https://www.rollingstone…
@washingtonpost @washingtonpost on x
TikTok users are eagerly sharing bin Laden's genocidal letter from the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, but missing the context. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
@ali_lev Alexandra S. Levine on x
Last night, as a letter from Osama Bin Laden began going viral on TikTok, the hashtag #lettertoamerica had 2 million views. Now, it has nearly 14 million views. TikTok has denied the videos praising 9/11 are trending. Developing story w/ @ebakerwhite: https://www.forbes.com/...
@ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald on x
❗️❗️Ever since Oct. 7, we've been urging people to recall the lessons of 9/11: not just US's huge “errors” responding but why it happened. Bin Laden's letter blaming US violence in their region - including US support for Israel - went viral on TikTok, so @guardian deleted it.
@jason_koebler Jason Koebler on x
one thing that i think is notable is that the entirety of all videos posted with the #LettertoAmerica hashtag on TikTok have just over 1 million views. Objectively many of the videos are simply explaining what the letter is. 1 million views on TikTok is not that many.
@jason_koebler Jason Koebler on x
This is a tiny, tiny corner of TikTok. There are only, really, a few dozen videos about the letter. The scale of TikTok compared to the scale of what can spike pageviews on The Guardian or anywhere else is deeply mismatched
@buccocapital BuccoCapital Guy on x
The right did their own research and stopped believing in modern medicine The left did their own research and agreed with Bin Laden Also, ban TikTok
@abolishnato @abolishnato on x
The Guardian took down a letter written by Osama Bin Laden because people on TikTok were discussing how he correctly blamed America for its role in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by arming Israel The document was there for 20 + years. They removed it today. [image]
@semaforben Ben Smith on x
What a strange moment
@normative Julian Sanchez on x
Also I suppose about how virality works. To the extent there are some kernels of legitimate critique of US policy in there among the ranting about Jews and homosexuals, you can find plenty of non-homicidal writers saying those things. But “OMG, Bin Laden had a point” nets clicks.
@seyitaylor @seyitaylor on x
I'm sorry but this is not a good thing. This is an actual bad thing, and yes, I'm at 90% that TikTok should be banned in America and Canada.
@normative Julian Sanchez on x
A couple additional points: (1) China did not make these people stupid. But it apparently makes various pundits stupid, because every time inane shit does well on TikTok, there's a predictable round of people insinuating, with no evidence whatever, that it must be some CCP psyop.
@allezlesboulez @allezlesboulez on x
unfollowing him now, i just thought he did 9/11, didn't know he was a Guardian columnist
@parkermolloy Parker Molloy on x
You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to Osama bin Laden
@omarsakrpoet Omar Sakr on x
Folks, it's getting weird out here.
@stevesi Steven Sinofsky on x
@yashar TikTok is only the mechanism. Thousands of students at universities marched in the 1960s carrying Mao's Little Red Book. The Communist Party has been an official party in US elections for decades. All before smartphones and TikTok.
@jasonabbruzzese Jason Abbruzzese on x
This is a good and important point! Virality on TikTok is just not the same as it was on other platforms in the past. It's far more segmented now. @maxwelltani @jwherrman and @broderick have done smart work on this topic/idea.
@jwherrman John Herrman on x
also, this is almost entirely a story about people on other platforms (and in media) misunderstanding something and amplifying it in the process
@dancow Dan Nguyen on x
The arguments AGAINST publishing a terrorist manifesto in full — e.g. the perception that it rewards successful terrorists with a platform — grow weaker over time, not stronger. With what context + nuance did Guardian provide bin Laden's letter in 2002 that disappears in 2023?
@normative Julian Sanchez on x
I am curious about the profile of the sort of person who is motivated to want to look up a decades-old political tract by Osama Bin Laden, yet apparently so sheltered heretofore that their MINDS ARE BLOWN by the familiar-to-the-point-of-banality list of grievances it contains.
@zei_squirrel @zei_squirrel on x
The Guardian deleting its translation of Osama Bin Laden's letter to America which it had on its site for over two decades, and put on it a year after 9/11, because he mentioned the US support for the genocidal Israel regime shows how pathetic the Western media class really is [i…
@nikitabier Nikita Bier on x
I, for one, am glad that we brought an antitrust case against Facebook and blocked them from acquiring companies like Musically/TikTok. It's much safer in China's hands instead of Zuck's. If in the rare event a psyop spreads that 9-11 was a good thing and America's youth...
r/ABoringDystopia r on reddit
The Guardian deletes OBL Letter to America after 21 years as it goes viral on TikTok
r/Enough_Sanders_Spam r on reddit
Osama bin Laden's ‘Letter to America’ Goes Viral 21 Years Later — on TikTok
r/TheMajorityReport r on reddit
Osama bin Laden ‘Letter to America’ Goes Viral, Is Deleted by Guardian
r/LateStageCapitalism r on reddit
People are agreeing with Bin Laden. WHAT.
r/conspiracy r on reddit
whats with the viral osama bin laden's letter to america?
r/Destiny r on reddit
Osama's Letter To America trending. 🤣️🤣️🤣️
@samfbiddle Sam Biddle on x
“TikTok is a communist Chinese brainwashing psyop to trick American children into opposing US foreign policy” is like Havana Syndrome for Big Tech alumni
r/Fauxmoi r on reddit
Sacha Baron Cohen, Debra Messing, Amy Schumer and more confront TikTok execs

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