flâneur

Osama bin Laden's TikTok popularity is based on childish notions of evil

substack.com · 1,714 words · saved by 1 readers

As was widely reported yesterday across outlets like Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, and Newsweek: So yet another TikTok controversy, followed up by more calls to ban it. And I’ll note that while it’s an overclaim to say the trend was all widespread agreement with Osama bin Laden, a lot of it was, at minimum, a positive re-evaluation. In response to the trend The Guardian, which had originally published the 2002 letter, took it down (although this only triggered a “Streisand effect” of more virality). Some were quick to accuse TikTok of promoting the whole thing. While the company cracked down on the trend and banned a bunch of the videos, it wasn’t before #lettertoamerica gained over 10 million views on the platform, and a lot of commentators and TikTok criticizers shared the videos. Personally, I’m not going to pretend I have some special insight into TikTok’s operation and how closely, if at all, the Chinese Communist Party is influencing its content (there was an entire congres

As was widely reported yesterday across outlets like Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, and Newsweek: So yet another TikTok controversy, followed up by more calls to ban it. And I’ll note that while it’s an overclaim to say the trend was all widespread agreement with Osama bin Laden, a lot of it was, at minimum, a positive re-evaluation. In response to the trend The Guardian, which had originally published the 2002 letter, took it down (although this only triggered a “Streisand effect” of more virality). Some were quick to accuse TikTok of promoting the whole thing. While the company…

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