Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/jRvdn

Facebook parent company Meta is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok.

The campaign includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and pushing to draw political reporters and local politicians into helping take down its biggest competitor. These bare-knuckle tactics, long commonplace in the world of politics, have become increasingly noticeable within a tech industry where companies vie for cultural relevance and come at a time when Facebook is under pressure to win back young users.

Employees with the firm, Targeted Victory, worked to undermine TikTok through a nationwide media and lobbying campaign portraying the fast-growing app, owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance, as a danger to American children and society, according to internal emails shared with The Washington Post.

Targeted Victory needs to “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,” a director for the firm wrote in a February email.

*snip*

[underpants]

1. Facebook isn't getting younger people

It’s an old people Boomer joke amongst my kid’s crowd.

[PortTack]

3. Nailed it!! Typical worn out gqp strategy copied and pasted by FB. Don't do anything to attract new

Younger users, just attack the competition.

[Frustratedlady]

2. Would one of their games be to encourage teens to destroy their schools?

Harass the teacher and/or students?

There was a period where the challenge of the week/month was to tear paper towels holders off the walls of bathrooms, soap dispensers and any other small aids. Our brand new schools went through this. They also had challenges to grab some boy by the testicles and video his reaction. Throw pencils at the ceilings until they stuck...all kinds of challenges that came through TikTok.

That sounds like GOP-type of shenanigans.