Meta vs TikTok: the company tries to discredit the Chinese social network

According to a report from Washington PostMeta is paying large consulting firms to orchestrate a campaign aimed at discrediting TikTok towards the general public. This strategy includes publishing editorials in major regional news outlets, spreading rumors about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebookas well as a journalistic and political push to defeat its biggest competitor.

Meta vs TikTok: the battle is raging

These tactics, long common in the world of politics, have also become increasingly used within the technology industry, where companies compete for cultural relevance, and come at a time when Facebook is under pressure to win back young users, who are leaving the platform en masse.

Company employees, Targeted Victory, have worked to undermine TikTok through a nationwide media and lobbying campaign that portrays the Chinese app as a danger to American children and society; this at least according to internal e-mails intercepted and then disseminated by the Washington Post.

Targeted Victory would then be tasked with portraying TikTok as the real threat, especially as foreign owned app in relation to the data that the latter collects on its young users. Campaign operators were also encouraged to use the importance of TikTok as a way to divert public attention from Meta’s current privacy and antitrust issues.

Targeted Victory declined to answer questions about this email exchange, stating only that she has been representing Meta for several years and is proud of the work she has done.