Facebook would have financed campaign against TikTok

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, reportedly hired a “republican lobby” in the United States to create a national fake news campaign about the dangers of using the TikTok social network.

According to several media outlets, the US social network paid Republican consultancy firm Targeted Victory to publish op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional media outlets to undermine its main Chinese-owned competitor, owned by ByteDance.

This was confirmed by several employees of Targeted Victory, who have leaked a series of emails to this medium to show that they developed a media campaign to alert younger American users of the dangers of using the application.

One of those emails includes a statement of intent from one of the directors of this Republican lobby group, who noted that TikTok is the “number one app for sharing data from the youth and teens who use it.”

In this disinformation campaign, members of Targeted Victory were also encouraged to highlight that, due to the rise of TikTok, the platform was managing to divert attention from Meta’s antitrust and privacy measures.

In other emails, this Republican lobby urged its partners and employees to filter alleged dangerous behavior associated with TikTok that could put teenagers at risk in the local media.

K. Tovar

Source: USA Today