The music video for iLoveFriday's 2017 song "Hate Me" showed Malik, a Pakistani-American woman, smoking a blunt while wearing a hijab, a type of veil worn by some Muslim women and traditionally used to maintain Islamic standards of modesty.

By January 2018, an Instagram account posted a screenshot of a fake tweet, attributed to Mia Khalifa, that criticized Malik and the "Hate Me" video.

[6] Although the screenshot was a joke, Malik said that she believed it was real when she first saw it and was shocked by the statement's apparent hypocrisy, given Khalifa's notoriety for appearing in a pornographic video performing sex acts while wearing a hijab.

According to college newspaper Minnesota Daily, "the song itself rose to notoriety not because of its associations with Mia Khalifa, but rather due to a bizarrely catchy rap bridge.

", noting the quality of an "almost Midwestern whine" in her voice despite her Atlanta origins, and wrote that "her melodies are straight and piercing, catchy to an obnoxious degree.

"[5] The song also uses sound effects from the arcade game Street Fighter II, including the Capcom logo jingle and the "Fight!"

[14] A panel of reviewers at Vice roundly condemned the song, calling it "upsettingly misogynistic in a really specific and sick way" and "really off-key and shitty sounding."

[2] An article in the college newspaper KentWired expressed similar feelings, further accusing the song of "pettiness" and criticizing the bland production and Malik's "grating voice".

[5][19] In this capacity, it has been identified as a predecessor to Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road", another song by a previously unknown and unsigned artist that found viral success through TikTok.

[20][21][22][13] While other songs reached comparable levels of popularity on the app around the same time—including, for example, Ariana Grande's "Thank U, Next"—"Mia Khalifa" was different because its success was completely spontaneous.

[5] The 15-second "hit or miss" snippet from "Mia Khalifa" was first uploaded to TikTok by a high-school age girl from South Dakota named Cheyanne Hays.

[5] Then, a British TikTok user named Georgia Twinn made a highly popular video using the same clip, drawing greater attention to the song.

[5] English cosplayer Belle Delphine, who has been noted for popularizing the e-girl aesthetic online, also uploaded a notable video of her lip-syncing and dancing along to the song.

[26] The song's lyrics were the 18th most-read on the site Genius in the first half of 2019, ranking ahead of "I Don't Care" by Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber, and "Wish You Were Gay" by Billie Eilish.

Rowe justified the group's decision by emphasizing that the opportunity for exposure would be more valuable in the long run than demanding compensation for past views.

Citing iLoveFriday's situation, Cody Atkinson of Australian BMA Magazine said TikTok's payment seemed to be worse than streaming services or even busking.

[28] Brett Gurewitz of the Los Angeles-based punk rock band Bad Religion criticized the company and said the situation was like "what we saw with Chuck Berry getting a Cadillac instead of royalties.