Why bin Laden wrote “Letter to America” on TikTok has not gone viral: What Happened to the 2002 Israeli-Hamas War?

TikTok says it has been “aggressively removing” hundreds of videos discussing a manifesto Osama bin Laden wrote in 2002 titled “Letter to America,” which somewhat mysteriously resurfaced on the platform in recent days.

Dozens of videos about the manifesto, titled “Letter to America,” have surfaced on TikTok over the past several days, with CNN reporting the topic amassed “at least” 14 million views by Thursday. The 2002 manifesto criticizes the US government for its 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.

The letter was the top-viewed story in the British publication, but the site removed it altogether because a transcript rose to the top. A spokesman for the paper said it was taken down since it had been “widely shared on social media without the full context.”

Since TikTok is used by more than one-third of young adults in the country, it will face pressure to moderate its content even after the Israel-Hamas war is over.

But as social media researchers pored over publicly available data on just how widespread the bin Laden content has been on TikTok, one thing became clear: the videos do not appear to have ever 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. The most recent 24 hour period on the platform had 200 million videos using the #gymtok and 137 million travel videos.

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 falsehoods are not immune. Next year’s election cycle is sure to be gasoline on these longstanding faults.”

One of the biggest mysteries in the saga is why bin Laden’s manifesto was renewed at all. 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.

“My understanding is that coordinated inauthentic behavior on TikTok is more likely to utilize anonymous meme pages than influencers. It’s easier, lower cost, and lower risk,” Richards wrote on X, adding that her analysis is based on a preliminary understanding of the situation. “So in short, we don’t know for sure.”

The Terrorist Leader’s Incendiary Writing: A Brief History of TikTok and Other Social Media Users’ Metrics

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.

On forums used by supporters of al-Qaeda, the letter’s re-appearance was cause for celebration. The SITE Intelligence Group noted a user on the extremist forums who wrote that he was hoping for a storm on social media. We should post more and more.

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 true of other sites too. 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.