Hashtag Pointing to bin Laden's 'Letter to America' Explodes

Against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war, Osama bin Laden's 2002 "Letter to America" is getting renewed attention—and causing massive controversy. As NBC News reports, TikTok removed the #lettertoamerica hashtag after posts on the social media platform referring to the letter started gaining attention on other social networks. On Instagram, for example, the autosuggest function started listing "letter to America" as a "popular search," and Google Trends showed that by Thursday, searches for bin Laden were up 400% from Tuesday. Coverage of the phenomenon:

• Letter removed: The Guardian used to have the full text of bin Laden's letter posted online, but removed it Wednesday after TikTok users started urging people to go read it. In its post about the removal, the newspaper pointed out the letter was being shared "without full context" and urged people to read the original newspaper article contextualizing it, which is posted here.
• Removal fuels the fire: The removal of the letter, however, only served to cause some TikTok users to further push the letter's importance, as they theorized the media was attempting to hide the truth.

• X post further amplifies TikToks: As the Washington Post explains, videos about the letter only had about 2 million views on TikTok (not very many on the wildly popular app) by Wednesday night, but after journalist Yashar Ali shared a compilation of some of those videos on X, their views on TikTok jumped to more than 15 million by Thursday afternoon (Ali's X post had more than 35 million views as of Thursday night).
• Link to Palestine: Time reports that bin Laden's letter, in which he explained why al-Qaeda attacked the US on September 11, 2001, references the US supporting Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. The letter also, per NBC, "includes antisemitic language and homophobic rhetoric."
• What TikTok creators are saying: Many expressed that the letter "changed their perspective on the 9/11 attacks and US foreign policy," CBS News reports, though many also noted they were not supporting the terrorist attacks, though they were questioning "US involvement in global conflicts," per NBC.
• What critics of those creators are saying: "Don't turn the long-public ravings of a terrorist into forbidden knowledge, something people feel excited to go rediscover," Renee DiResta, a research manager at the Stanford internet Observatory, wrote on Threads Thursday. "Let people read the murderer's demands—this is the man some TikTok fools chose to glorify. Add more context."
• Criticism of TikTok: As NBC notes, some have long considered TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, a threat to US national security, and the Post says some have been claiming for a while now that TikTok is pushing anti-Israel propaganda to users.

(More Israel-Hamas war stories.)