TikTok CEO goes after Zuckerberg for attacks 'disguised as patriotism'

TikTok
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As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg readies to face a grilling from lawmakers, he's first being publicly blasted by the head of TikTok.

TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer in a blog post on Wednesday defended the video app and directly went after Facebook, ripping what he described as "attacks by our competitor — namely Facebook — disguised as patriotism and designed to put an end to our very presence in the U.S.," Bloomberg reports.

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Mayer in the post hits Facebook over its TikTok competitor, Instagram Reels, calling it "another copycat product" that's coming after Facebook's previous TikTok competitor, Lasso, "failed quickly." He also writes that TikTok is "not the enemy" while announcing that the company will disclose "the actual code that drives our algorithms" in what Axios describes as an "unprecedented move that could help defuse concerns from U.S. lawmakers."

The New York Times' Ben Smith described Mayer's statement on Wednesday as a "much more sophisticated piece of politics" than Facebook has offered, adding that Facebook "has settled on a kind of caricatured anti-China stance that nobody buys."

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Brendan Morrow

Brendan worked as a culture writer at The Week from 2018 to 2023, covering the entertainment industry, including film reviews, television recaps, awards season, the box office, major movie franchises and Hollywood gossip. He has written about film and television for outlets including Bloody Disgusting, Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Heavy and The Celebrity Cafe.