NEW YORK- According to AFP, Meta, the owner of Facebook, has engaged a consultancy company to conduct a US campaign disparaging its competitive competitor, TikTok.
According to reports, the effort would involve letters to major US news sites and the promotion of bad articles about TikTok, supposedly using strong techniques typical to Washington politics.
Earlier this year, the Meta lost billions of dollars due to a lack of certainty about its future. Now, the video-sharing site that is popular with young people is in a fierce fight with the Meta.
In a one-line comment to the piece, Meta told AFP that “we feel that all platforms, including TikTok, should be subjected to scrutiny commensurate with their rising popularity.”
Targeted Victory said that they worked with Meta, but they didn’t deny that they spread bad things about TikTok.
“We’re happy of the work we’ve done to raise awareness about the hazards of TikTok,” CEO Zac Moffatt of the business tweeted.
The Post alleged that Targeted Victory employees attempted to destroy TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese corporation ByteDance, by encouraging a campaign to paint it as a risk to American children, citing internal emails from the firm.
According to the Post, one letter said that Targeted Victory needed to “get the information out that although Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the true danger, particularly as a foreign-owned app that is the leader in data sharing among young kids.”
One campaign reportedly got parents to sign letters expressing their concerns and sent them to U.S. publications, with some of them publishing them.
Targeted Victory also told the government and the media about possible TikTok trends that encourage students to vandalise school property, called “devious licks” or the “slap a teacher” challenge.
There were no videos on TikTok about the “challenge” encouraging young people to hit their teachers, so an investigation by the “Reply All” podcast found that it came from Facebook.
AFP reports that TikTok says it is very concerned about local media stories about “trends” that haven’t been verified on the platform. This could cause real-world problems.
Moffatt, the CEO of Targeted Victory, also said that the Post piece “mischaracterizes the work we do.” He said things like how people who wrote letters to newspapers were described.
“The tale implies that the writers did not write the letters to the editor themselves and were unaware of Meta’s participation. That is not true “he said on Twitter.
When AFP reached out to the individuals mentioned as signing the latter, they did not get a response.
