Meta hired a campaign to discredit TikTok in the United States

aktarlaboni1234

CARLA QUINTEROMARCH 31,

Meta hired a campaign to discredit TikTok in the United States
Share on LinkedIn Share on Twitter Share on WhatsApp Share on Telegram Share on Facebook Copy link
Meta , the parent company of Facebook , Instagram and WhatsApp, would have resorted to the help of a consulting firm linked to the Republican Party to create a campaign in the United States aimed at ensuring that TikTok is seen as “a danger to American children and young people.” " , according to an exclusive published by The Washington Post .


According to the newspaper, the company led by Mark Zuckerberg hired a consulting company called Targeted Victory, which has worked in the past on electoral campaigns for the Republican Party, as well as for Target itself, so that it could “orchestrate a campaign at the level national” against the platform of Chinese origin. The newspaper also points out that Targeted Victory, for its part, was in charge of hiring dozens of public relations companies throughout the North American country, seeking to “inclinate public opinion against TikTok,” which would have been made possible by infiltrating news stories. local and helping to publish opinion articles against this platform in media throughout the country.

From Meta they have confirmed that, indeed, Targeted Victory is behind this campaign Ivory Coast Email List We believe that all platforms, including TikTok, should face a level of scrutiny commensurate with their growing success,” company spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement.

For his part , Targeted Victory CEO Zac Moffatt commented that the company has taken on the task of “managing bipartisan teams on behalf of our clients.” “It is public knowledge that we have worked with Meta for several years and we are proud of the work we have done ,” he said in a statement.

TikTok: a threat to Meta
The Washington Post obtained access to internal emails from Targeted Victory that provided details of a campaign to intimidate TikTok, whose parent company is ByteDance, of Chinese origin. The company used a mix of “genuine concerns and unfounded concerns” about TikTok, seeking to get both the public and American politicians to crusade against the platform.


As the newspaper explains, the campaign included the publication of “opinion articles and letters to the editor in the main regional media, the promotion of dubious stories about supposed TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook and the pressure to attract political reporters and local politicians to help defeat their biggest competitor.”

According to the Post report, Targeted Victory was also working to get “proactive coverage” of Facebook in regional U.S. media outlets, including “sending letters and op-eds praising Facebook’s role, for example.” , in supporting African-American-owned businesses.” The strategy focused, among other things, on promoting stories blaming TikTok for dangerous trends that actually emerged in Meta apps and lobbying politicians to take action against the social network.



Another leaked report revealed that Facebook knows that TikTok wins over the youngest audience on social networks thanks to its content. In this report, researchers found that teenagers spend up to three times as much time browsing and consuming different content on TikTok, compared to the average use of Instagram among that same sector of users on that social network. According to the leak, Targeted Victory needed to convey the message that while Meta-Facebook is the one that is viewed poorly for its privacy management , “ TikTok is the real threat, especially as a foreign-owned app that is the number 1 in the data exchange used by young adolescents.”

Some of the emails directed at TikTok were sent in February, shortly after Meta announced that Facebook had lost users for the first time in its 18-year history. At the time, Mark Zuckerberg informed investors about what a major obstacle TikTok has become for his company. “People have a lot of choices about how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly . ” Additionally, the company introduced Reels , a short video feature quite similar to the Chinese social network.