In Meta’s antitrust trial on Wednesday, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tiktok’s success was a risk to Meta’s business, a “first priority” when it arrived in 2018 and a “very urgent” competitive threat, according to Bloomberg and other outlets.
The report comes from the first week of packing of testimony in the US Federal Trade Commission trial against the social networking giant. If the FTC lawyer wins, the trial could require META to spin out Instagram or WhatsApp as separate companies.
In particular, Zuckerberg confirmed on Wednesday that Tiktok’s arrival had a direct impact on the meta. His company said it observed that Tiktok “dramatically slowed growth” when it became popular. He also said the ordinance app has remained the focus of Meta’s competitive efforts for years.
Byte Dance purchased Musical.ly in 2017 and merged with Tiktok the following year. Around the same time, Meta (known as Facebook at the time) stopped reporting Facebook user numbers in quarterly reports and moved to a new “Family of Apps” metric, including Instagram and WhatsApp. This change was designed to hide the fact that Meta’s flagship app slows growth.
Zuckerberg made another interesting comment during the trial in response to a question about the “network effects” of social media platforms. He said it’s not so important for social media apps to grow by leveraging connections between friends and family.
“The app now functions primarily as a discovery engine,” Zuckerberg told the court. “People can bring that content to the messaging engine.”
At the same time, however, Facebook is turning again to these network effects and trying to return to its “OG roots.” The company recently released new features designed to make it easier to connect with friends, such as the modified Friends tab, which highlights friend requests and activities. In January, Zuckerberg told investors that “returning to Facebook” in 2025 was a key goal.
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