Facebook reportedly paying for smear campaign against TikTok over \u201cdangerous\u201d trends TikTok\/FacebookFacebook are reportedly paying a huge consulting firm to run a smear campaign against popular video app TikTok, calling it \u201ca threat to American children.\u201d TikTok has become one of the most popular apps on the planet in recent years, with small creators all the way up to global corporations sharing content on the platform in order to boost their social footprint. While TikTok has faced controversy in the past \u2014 with threats of it even being banned by the former United States president \u2014 it is being reported that Facebook is working to make matters worse for the ByteDance-owned app. Targeted Victory, a consulting firm that works extensively within the United States\u2019 political spectrum, has reportedly been called upon by Facebook parent company Meta to boost messages besmirching TikTok as a threat, due to \u201cdangerous\u201d viral trends. As reported by The Washington Post, Facebook\u2019s campaign against TikTok includes \u201cplanting Meta-approved op-eds in major regional news outlets from \u2018concerned parents,\u2019 promoting dubious stories about \u2018TikTok trends,\u2019 and pushing to draw political reporters, politicians into the fight,\u201d explained reporter Taylor Lorenz. Read More: Top 20 most followed TikTok accounts – \u201cWe need 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,\u201d one member of staff reportedly said. The firm allegedly worked to amplify negative TikTok coverage with links to dubious local news stories citing TikTok as the origin of dangerous teen trends, which partners were encouraged to replicate in their own markets. Emails obtained by the Post show how \u201cthe firm has effectively promoted its anti-TikTok messaging without revealing that it came from a firm working on Meta\u2019s behalf. None of the op-eds or letters to the editor were published with any indication that the Meta-funded group had been involved.\u201d The report also suggests that many of the TikTok trends deemed \u201cdangerous\u201d actually originated on Facebook. A TikTok spokesperson told The Washington Post that they are \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d about \u201cthe stoking of local media reports on alleged trends that have not been found on the platform.\u201d Targeted Victory responds Dexerto has since received a statement from Targeted Victory CEO Zac Moffatt. It said: \u201cTargeted Victory\u2019s corporate practice manages bipartisan teams on behalf of our clients. It is public knowledge we have worked with Meta for several years and we are proud of the work we have done.\u201d In a Twitter thread, the chief also claimed The Washington Post\u2019s story \u201cmischaracterized\u201d the work they do. He tweeted: \u201cToday\u2019s Washington Post story not only mischaracterizes the work we do, but key points are simply false. We tried to reach out to The Washington Post to further talk through them, but never got a response.\u201d We are a right-of-center firm, but the teams we manage bipartisan teams, including the ones mentioned in the article\u2014also both authors are Democrats. Here is our full statement\u2014omitted by The Post: 2\/ \u2014 Zac Moffatt (@ZacMoffatt) March 30, 2022 Moffatt claims that the original story omitted a statement he provided, too \u2013 reposting it to Twitter in a string of seven messages. \u201cThe story infers that the words of the letters to the editor were not the authors\u2019 own, nor did they know of Meta\u2019s involvement,\u201d Moffatt continued. \u201cThat is false. They will confirm that. We had hoped to not have them included in this manufactured story out of respect for their personal privacy.\u201d Dexerto will continue to update this story as it develops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Facebook reportedly paying for smear campaign against TikTok over \u201cdangerous\u201d trends TikTok\/FacebookFacebook are reportedly paying a huge consulting firm to run a smear campaign against popular video app TikTok, calling it \u201ca threat to American children.\u201d TikTok has become one of the most popular apps on the planet in recent years, with small creators all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}