Posted on 03/30/2022 11:24:52 AM PDT by Red Badger
Facebook's corporate parent sought to cast its rival as harmful to teenagers and a danger to society.
In an increasingly desperate bid to reduce the appeal of TikTok, Facebook’s parent company Meta quietly paid a Republican consulting firm to smear the social media rival as a danger to society.
Internal emails obtained by The Washington Post show how Targeted Victory, a GOP strategy group, seeded anti-TikTok stories in local media across the country at the behest of Meta as Meta’s family of apps failed to attract young users.
One email from a Targeted Victory director in February, for instance, instructed operatives to cast TikTok as “the real threat” in social media while Meta is just “the current punching bag.”
Another operative wrote that the “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.’”
In addition to questioning the data security of its Chinese-owned competitor, many of the stories sought to blame TikTok for harmful trends that actually originated on Facebook and Instagram.
That includes the so-called “Devious Licks” challenge, for instance, that encouraged students to vandalize school property. Devious Licks spread widely on TikTok and resulted in very real damage across the country, yet actually began on Facebook.
“We are deeply concerned that the stoking of local media reports on alleged trends that have not been found on the platform could cause real world harm,” TikTok told HuffPost in an emailed statement.
A Meta spokesperson told HuffPost the campaign was meant to prompt “scrutiny” of the platform “consistent with their growing success.”
The company did not respond to a more pointed question about the irony of Meta casting TikTok as dangerous to teenagers, considering Meta’s own internal research shows Instagram is highly toxic for that demographic.
The Washington Post revelations align with Meta’s longtime strategy of buying rivals or, failing that, copying their best features and trying to bully them out of existence.
In 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attempted to buy TikTok’s predecessor, but, having been rebuffed, set out to cast it as a threat to democracy.
A senior Facebook executive told BuzzFeed News at the time, “Facebook is so pissed that TikTok is the one thing they can’t beat that they’ve turned to geopolitical arguments and lawmakers in Washington to fight their fight.”
Ping!............
And? Its a Chinese entity that paid 92 million dollars because they harvested and utilized stolen data.
I have 4x kids ages 13 to 23. None of them use Facebook. “It’s for old people.”
“smear” or just say what it is? uses the same words.
HuffPost? C’mon. They make CNN seem credible.
Why would they pay GOP consultants to di it? They have no impact on Society. If anything, this helped TikTok. Why didn’t they pay the GOP consultants to praise TikTok?
So facebook [which I hate] hired a company to denigrate its competition? Happens all the time. Nothing here.
Do NOT confuse this with collusion or other acts that violate anti-trust laws. It doesn/t.
Hey Facebook, go over and sit with MySpace in the bingo room while you wait for pudding time.
What a fascinating "message" pretending to be news.
Cast of characters includes a HuffPost article about Facebook, Meta and the Washington Post, and manages to slip in GOP while making TikTok a victim.
Hmm.
CEO Zac Moffatt "served as Digital Director for Mitt Romney for President. He has helped Fortune 500 companies enhance their brand and get their message out in the current political and media environment. His corporate work includes brands such as FedEx, AT&T, Facebook and Gillette."
Source: https://targetedvictory.com/team/#zac-moffattceo
This consultant company -- not actually affiliated with the Republican party, unless HuffPost confesses to being officially affiliated with the Democrat Party -- worked for Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, so not exactly representing winners.
Zuckerberg dumped millions on Democrats, so this is just noise. TikTok is no victim, merely an "unfair" competitor. Like William-Lia Thomas. Sucks to be a liberal or a Romney supporter.
They weren’t wrong.
And all the social media outlets disavowed Conservatives an
equal voice.
So?
This is the Farcebook Is Evil ping list.
h/t SC DOC
You get it for free but the quality sucks. You have no say in how it works. The guy who runs it gets rich. There's no real competition. You have no privacy. And if you say one thing they don't like they'll shut you up. |
If you'd like to be on or off this list, please click Private Reply below and drop me a FReepmail.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.