Meta, the parent company to Facebook, is paying one of the "biggest Republican consulting firms" in the U.S. to try and "turn the public against" online video app TikTok, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The firm Targeted Victory has been working to "undermine" TikTok by implementing a national media and lobbying campaign that places "op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook," the Post writes. The firm has also been pushing political reporters and local politicians to move against TikTok, Facebook's biggest competitor.
Operatives were "encouraged to use TikTok's prominence as a way to deflect from Meta's own privacy and antitrust concerns," the Post reports.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
In one example, a Targeted Victory director wrote in a February email that the firm must "get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using."
Other times, Targeted Victory urged partners to "push stories to local media tying TikTok to dangerous teen trends in an effort to show the app's purported harms."
"Dream would be to get stories with headlines like 'From dances to danger: how TikTok has become the most harmful social media space for kids,'" one staffer wrote to a partner.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone stood by the Targeted Victory campaign, telling the Post, "We believe all platforms, including TikTok, should face a level of scrutiny consistent with their growing success."
TikTok, meanwhile, is "deeply concerned" about "the stoking of local media reports on alleged trends that have not been found on the platform." Read more at The Washington Post.
-
Political cartoons for October 26Cartoons Sunday’s editorial cartoons include Young Republicans group chat, Louvre robbery, and more
-
Why Britain is struggling to stop the ransomware cyberattacksThe Explainer New business models have greatly lowered barriers to entry for criminal hackers
-
Greene’s rebellion: a Maga hardliner turns against TrumpIn the Spotlight The Georgia congresswoman’s independent streak has ‘not gone unnoticed’ by the president
-
Sora 2 and the fear of an AI video futureIn the Spotlight Cutting-edge video-creation app shares ‘hyperrealistic’ AI content for free
-
Trump allies reportedly poised to buy TikTokSpeed Read Under the deal, U.S. companies would own about 80% of the company
-
Google avoids the worst in antitrust rulingSpeed Read A federal judge rejected the government's request to break up Google
-
Supreme Court allows social media age check lawSpeed Read The court refused to intervene in a decision that affirmed a Mississippi law requiring social media users to verify their ages
-
Nvidia hits $4 trillion milestoneSpeed Read The success of the chipmaker has been buoyed by demand for artificial intelligence
-
X CEO Yaccarino quits after two yearsSpeed Read Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino to run X in 2023
-
Musk chatbot Grok praises Hitler on XSpeed Read Grok made antisemitic comments and referred to itself as 'MechaHitler'
-
Disney, Universal sue AI firm over 'plagiarism'Speed Read The studios say that Midjourney copied characters from their most famous franchises
