TikTok is “proactively and aggressively” taking down videos boosting a letter written by Osama bin Laden laying out his justification for the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
Videos referencing the 2002 letter, which was published on the Guardian’s website two decades ago, had spread across multiple social networks earlier in the week, though how widely was unclear.
“Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,” TikTok said in the statement. “We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got on to our platform.”
The TikTok videos about Bin Laden’s letter often linked to the Observer, which published the full text in translation on 24 November 2002.
In response to the letter’s renewed spread, Guardian News and Media removed it on 15 November 2023, replacing it with the statement: “The transcript published on our website had been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we decided to take it down and direct readers instead to the news article that originally contextualised it.”
www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/16/tiktok-bin-laden-letter-to-america-videos-removal