Mark Zuckerberg and other people at Meta thought TikTok was better than Meta. This is from a new paper in court.

A paper from February 2022 shows talks between some Meta leaders. They talked about plans for Facebook and Instagram and where they are in the market. In one message, Zuckerberg said Facebook is like a new player that has "lost people's attention and energy." He also said TikTok helps friends feel connected because they see the same funny pictures.

Mosseri said Facebook is not the main way people find new things anymore. He thinks YouTube might be the main way now, but he believes TikTok will be even more popular than YouTube later because Meta has a lot of information.

Mosseri wrote: "Facebook should be the main place where people find new things. But it's interesting that TikTok only uses videos and is doing much better than us. I think they are making the social media market bigger and also taking people away from TV, long videos, and Netflix."

One study found that people in the U.S. watched TikTok more than YouTube in 2021. Another study showed that children spent much more time on TikTok than YouTube in 2023. Last year, TikTok started letting people upload longer videos to compete with YouTube.

This week, Netflix added something new to its phone app. It's like TikTok. It shows short videos that Netflix thinks you will like, just for you.

In the trial, the U.S. government is trying to show that Meta broke rules about competition. They say Meta bought companies like Instagram and WhatsApp to become the only big social media company. A paper like this could hurt their case, because inside Meta, leaders were talking about how TikTok was much better than Facebook.

For example, Zuckerberg said that Facebook had the most users every day and week, but people spent more time on other apps.

He also said that TikTok helps people feel connected. This is because if you and your friends like the same things, you will probably see the same things on TikTok.

The CEO said, "This makes it social because you don't need to send things to a friend. You can think they have seen it. If we could do this with topics and other things on Facebook, it would be good."

Other executives also shared their opinions.

Will Cathcart from WhatsApp said that if you comment on TikTok videos about a topic you like, the app will show you and other people who commented more videos about that topic.

Stan Chudnovsky, who was a manager at Meta, said that many companies were now competing with Meta and making it harder for Meta to grow.

Adding a new type of content is not enough now. People can use many other apps.

John Hegeman, who worked with ads, said TikTok was very good at short videos and making tools for them. But he thought Meta could be just as good if people also shared their videos on Reels.

But he wasn't sure how far behind Meta was with the technology and tools. The paper shows that Meta thinks Facebook is not as strong as others in social media.

Other papers also showed that Meta was afraid of other companies. For example, Zuckerberg said last month that TikTok was a risk to Meta and made it grow more slowly.