Meta, owner of Facebook, has hired a consultant to carry out a campaign in the United States that denigrates its fierce rival TikTok, according to a report from Washington Post published this Wednesday and partially confirmed by AFP.
The campaign reportedly includes letter placements in major US media outlets and promotion of negative stories about TikTokallegedly using the kind of hard-line tactics familiar to Washington politics.
Pitched fight against TikTok
Goal, which lost hundreds of billions in value earlier this year due to doubts about its future, is in a free-for-all against the video-sharing platform popular with young social media fans.
“We believe that all platforms, including TikTok, should face a level of scrutiny consistent with their growing success,” Meta told AFP in a one-line statement in response to the article.
The consultancy, Targeted Victory, confirmed to have worked for Meta and did not deny posting negative information about TikTok.
“We are proud of the work we have done to highlight the dangers of TikTok,” CEO of the firm, Zac Moffatt, tweeted.
“TikTok is the real threat”
The Targeted Victory employees worked to undermine TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, promoting an effort to have it portrayed as a danger to American children, reported The Washington Post, citing internal emails from the firm.
The US media quoted a message saying that Targeted Victory needed to “get the message across that while Target is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threatespecially as a foreign-owned app that is number one in data sharing used by young teens.”
Strategy: letters from parents and acts of vandalism
One of the efforts reportedly included getting parents to sign letters expressing concern, which were sent to US newspapers, some of which published them.
Targeted Victory also alerted elected officials and journalists to alleged trends on TikTok encouraging students to vandalize their school facilities, known as “devious licks” or the “slap a teacher” challenge.
The “challenge” that urged young users to attack teachers did not start on TikTok, but on Facebook, according to an investigation by the “Reply All” podcastbeing the researcher unable to find any video on this topic on TikTok.
“We are deeply concerned that the revival of local media reports of alleged trends that have not been found on the platform could cause real-world harm,” TikTok said in a statement.
Moffatt, the CEO of Targeted Victory, also argued that the article in the Washington Post “mischaracterizes the work we do”, citing examples such as the characterization of the people who signed the letters sent to the newspapers.
“The article infers that the words of the letters to the editor were not from the authors, nor did they know of Meta’s participation. That is false,” he tweeted.
When AFP contacted the people named as signatories to the letters, they did not respond to requests for comment. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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