Meta Executives Acknowledge Facebook's Decline Against TikTok in FTC Filing

Internal Meta documents revealed in a recent U.S. Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuit show that top executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri, acknowledged TikTok's significant competitive threat to Facebook and Instagram. They conceded that Facebook had lost mindshare and momentum, with TikTok creating a "shared context" where users engage with common memes, making it more appealing. Mosseri noted that while YouTube currently leads as a discovery platform, TikTok is rapidly surpassing it, especially since TikTok focuses exclusively on video content and has expanded the social mobile market by encroaching on traditional TV and long-form video platforms like Netflix. Studies cited by Meta executives showed TikTok overtook YouTube in average watch time in the U.S. by 2021 and that children aged 4 to 18 spent 60% more time on TikTok than YouTube in 2023. In response to TikTok's dominance, Netflix recently introduced a TikTok-like vertical video feed in its app. These admissions may complicate the U.S. government's case against Meta for alleged anti-competitive behavior through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.