TikTok star Max Balegde has responded to accusations he bullied late One Direction star Liam Payne. The 25-year-old internet personality drew attention from fans when they noticed he removed a string of videos he had made in which he criticised Liam - who tragically fell to his death from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires last week. Following a barrage of comments about his social media content, Max released a statement via social media in which he said he removed videos as a mark of respect for the For You singer.
He also addressed the fact he had been absent from social media in the wake of the shock news of Liam's passing. Taking to Instagram Stories on Wednesday, Max wrote: "Hey guys - you might have noticed that I’ve been away from socials for a few days, and I’ve had a lot of people ask me why I took down my videos about Liam Payne. The reason for both of these is out of respect to this tragic news.
He continued: "I always want my pop culture based content to be light hearted, so it of course didn’t feel right to leave those videos up given the awful news.” Max closed the statement, writing: “Sending love to everyone affected by this loss” - and added a heart shaped hand emoji. His post came after a number of fans appeared to turn on him over past social media content.
One fan wrote on X: "no one is talking about how max balegde deleted all of his tiktoks (a lot) where he talks about/ bullied liam. he knew he did wrong." And another commented: "I used to reall.
