TikTok has been Facebook’s number one rival in the social media space. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive has even said that TikTok is a major obstacle.
With declining app downloads and usage, Meta’s apps have tried to lure TikTok’s millennial and Gen-Z users by cloning the app’s features including launching Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels.
Teens are spending 2X and 3X more time on TikTok when compared to Instagaram.
Facebook Internal Report
Well, that has not been enough. Facebook got dirty and paid a Targeted Victory, one of the biggest Republican consulting firm in a smear campaign against TikTok.
Documents seen by The Washington Post reveal that Meta hired the firm to tear down TikTok.
They planted negative stories by placing op-eds in regional news outlets in America like the Denver Post and Des Moines Register.
“Get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign-owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using,” reads an email written by a Targeted Victory director.
The smear campaign aimed to amplify negative TikTok coverage through a Google document titled “Bad TikTok Clips”
Meta was trying to redirect privacy concerns from its apps to TikTok.
The campaign went to the extent of portraying TikTok in bad light by pushing stories in local media tying TikTok to dangerous teen trends in an effort to show the app’s purported harms, The Post reports.
“Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger: how TikTok has become the most harmful social media space for kids,’ ”
Go read the full story here.
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