Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosselli, and other Meta executives thought Tiktok was defeating Meta in his own game. That comes from a new filing in the US Federal Trade Commission's anti-trust lawsuit against the tech giant, which was released Monday.
The document, which was in February 2022, includes conversations between many meta-executives discussing Facebook and Instagram's strategies and market location. In one message, Zuckerberg called Facebook a “challenger” “he lost mindsharing and momentum,” and added that Tiktok will create a “sharing context” where friends see the same meme.
Mosseri also agrees that Facebook should now be considered a challenger, noting that it is the default discovery engine. He suggested that today's priority discovery engine could become YouTube, but given that Meta was on hand, he hoped that Tiktok would outperform Google-owned video platforms in time.
“The most natural differentiated … Facebook's strategy is to be the default discovery aspect. But it's interesting. [TikTok] Mosseri writes. “I think they're growing the social mobile market and dining on television, longform videos and Netflix.”
Moseri was right. Tiktok overtook YouTube in the US in 2021 with average surveillance times, one study found. Another study by parent control software maker Qustodio found that children aged 4 to 18 spent 60% more time on Tiktok in 2023 than on YouTube. Last year, Tiktok began allowing them to try to upload 60 minutes to YouTube.
And this week, Netflix introduced its own Tiktok-like experience in its mobile app, providing individual users with a new vertical video feed of personalized recommended videos.
However, in the trial, the US government is trying to prove that META violated competition laws by acquiring companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp to create a social networking monopoly. Such documents could damage cases given that meta executives are discussing how badly Facebook is beaten by Tiktok.
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Zuckerberg, for example, said that even if Facebook is the biggest app in terms of the number of people involved every day or week, it no longer is the biggest app even after spending time.
He also pointed out that Tiktok has a way of providing people with a shared sense of context. In other words, if you and your friends are interested in the same thing, he said, you could probably come across the same thing on Tiktok's feed.
“It's essentially social because you can assume that they saw it, rather than having to send some content to a friend,” the CEO explained. “If you can reach this level with content that's not connected to FB topics, that's great.”
Other executives cried out.
Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, pointed out that Tiktok users can comment on videos from certain niches.
Meta VP and GM Stan Chudnowsky added that Meta has begun to compete in a highly fragmented space with “the many companies that are digging into our growth.”
“Adding new formats like we did with Stories isn't enough anymore. There are so many more people out there,” he adds, citing other popular social apps in the US, including Tiktok, Twitter, Imessage, Snap, YouTube, Reddit, Discord, and more.
John Hegeman, then Vice President of Advertising (now Chief Revenue Officer), agreed that Tiktok was “obviously leading” in areas such as short video content, ranking features and creation tools, but said he thought Meta could fill the gap by posting reels to creators.
However, he said he's not very sure how far behind the Meta is in terms of machine learning and technical aspects of things, as well as the creation tools. This document, in Meta's view, portrays Facebook as a weaker in the social media market.
It is also not the only document that emerged during the trial to demonstrate the fear of Meta's competition. Zuckerberg himself testified last month that Tiktok's success was a risk to meta's business and slowed growth.