Osama bin Laden’s videos were made on TikTok

The Letter to America and the Israel-Hamas War: Why We Need Your Help, Not Ours? Why We Shouldn’t Forget to Ask for Help

TikTok stated that it was not soft on pro-Palestinian content and said that more posts were tagged with #FreePalestine than #standwithIsrael. The platform says it also doesn’t allow “inaccurate, misleading, or false content that may cause significant harm to individuals or society, regardless of intent.”

Over the past few days there have been many videos on TikTok about the Letter to America, which has been viewed by at least 14 million people. Originally published in 2002, the manifesto criticizes the US government’s presence in the Middle East and support of Israel. However, some creators are now trying to apply that criticism to the US government’s response to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

A transcript of the letter, which The Guardian published in 2002, rose to the top of the British publication’s most-viewed stories, leading the site to remove it altogether. The paper’s spokesman said that it was taken down because it had been shared on social media without the full context.

The Israel-Hamas war has been a huge test for TikTok, and the platform will only continue to face pressure to strictly moderate its content, especially since nearly one-third of young adults use TikTok to get their news.

One thing that became clear as social media researchers pored over publicly available data was that the bin Laden content on TikTok has never gone viral.

There were fewer than 300 videos using the hashtag #lettertoamerica that garnered around 2 million views by Wednesday, according to TikTok, a platform with an estimated 1.6 billion monthly active users. For comparison, a recent 24-hour period on the platform had 200 million videos using #GymTok and #travel videos racked up 137 million.

The frenzy over the videos prompted moral panic among lawmakers and other observers over the idea that TikTok was radicalizing young people and amplifying the writing of a terrorist, according to Jared Holt, senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

“This story speaks to how far there still is to go in boosting social media literacy and how susceptible everyone is to information disorder and suggestion,” Holt told NPR. “even those who might consider themselves people trying to speak truth against lies are not immune.” The election next year is likely to be a gasoline on these longstanding faults.

One thing that’s not known about the whole saga is how bin Laden’s document was changed. Some of the first now-removed TikToks of the document were created by health and wellness influencers, but what potential online forum, or social media site, or group chat originally resurrected the hateful screed is a mystery.

Abbie Richards, a research fellow with the Accelerationism Research Consortium, a group that studies the threat of online extremism, said while the phenomenon’s origin story is murky, it so far does not have the markings of a coordinated campaign undertaken by a single hostile actor.

I believe that coordinated inauthentic behavior is more likely to use anonymous meme pages. It’s easier, cheaper and less risky according to Richards, who said her analysis is based on a preliminary understanding of the situation. We don’t know for sure.

How popular is TikTok? Sensitivity to Elon Musk’s “Reasonation” of the Al-Qaeda Letter to the Editor

That decision fueled online conspiracies about whether there was concerted effort underway to censor the document from the Internet. It also led to pushback from some researchers, who argued that the terrorist leader’s incendiary writing should remain published to expose it for what it is.

The re-appearance of the letter was a cause for celebration among al-Qaeda supporters. A user wrote on the extremists forums that they hoped to see the storm on social media. We should post more and more content.”

Knowing precisely how popular certain content is on TikTok has become increasing challenging, since outside researchers have limited access to the platform’s internal data. That is also true of other sites. Elon Musk has taken away researchers’ ability to analyze the site’s metrics, setting something of a new norm among the platforms of boxing out independent review of patterns and trends on social media platforms.

“So, we’re stuck in a world where it’s incredibly hard to verify trends on either platform,” said Brandon Silverman, the former CEO of data analytics tool CrowdTangle.