Important people at Meta, like CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri, thought that TikTok was doing better than Meta in their area of business.

The document from February 2022 has talks between some Meta leaders about Facebook's and Instagram's plans and their place in the market. In one message, Zuckerberg said Facebook is a "challenger" that has "lost popularity and progress." He also said that TikTok makes a "feeling of shared context" where friends see the same popular online jokes.

Mosseri agreed that Facebook is now a competitor and not the main way people find things online. He thought YouTube might be the most popular way to find things now, but he believed TikTok would become more popular than YouTube later, based on Meta's information.

According to Mosseri, Facebook's best way to stand out is to be the main place people find things online. However, he finds it interesting that TikTok, which is only videos, is winning against them. He believes TikTok is making the social mobile market bigger and also taking users from TV, long videos, and even Netflix.

Mosseri was right. One study in 2021 found that people in the U.S. spent more time watching TikTok than YouTube. Another study in 2023 showed that young people aged 4 to 18 spent 60% more time on TikTok than YouTube. Last year, TikTok started letting users upload videos up to 60 minutes long to try and compete with YouTube.

This week, Netflix added a new feature to its mobile app that is similar to TikTok. It shows short, vertical videos suggesting shows and movies, based on what each user likes.

However, in the trial, the U.S. government is trying to show that Meta broke competition laws when it bought companies like Instagram and WhatsApp. They say Meta did this to control the social media market. This document could hurt their case because, inside Meta, leaders were talking about how Facebook was losing badly to TikTok.

For example, Zuckerberg said that even if Facebook had the most daily or weekly users, people were spending less time on it.

He also said that TikTok helps people feel like they are part of a group that shares the same interests. He explained that if you and your friends like the same things, you will probably see the same things on your TikTok feed.

"This makes it naturally social," the CEO said. "Instead of sending content to a friend, you can assume they have already seen it. If we could get to this level with different topics and content on FB, that would be great."

Other executives also contributed their perspectives.

WhatsApp boss Will Cathcart said that if TikTok users comment on videos about a certain topic, the app will show them and other commenters more videos on that topic.

Stan Chudnovsky, who was a Vice President and General Manager at Meta, said that Meta had started to compete in a market that was very divided, and many companies were reducing their growth.

He also said that just adding a new format, like they did with Stories, is not enough now. This is because people use many other platforms, and he mentioned popular social apps in the U.S. like TikTok, Twitter, iMessage, Snap, YouTube, Reddit, and Discord.

John Hegeman, who was in charge of ads and is now the head of income, agreed that TikTok was clearly better at short videos, helping people find content, and providing tools to make things. But he thought Meta could catch up if creators also put their videos on Reels.

However, he wasn't sure how far behind Meta was with technology and tools for making things. Also, the document shows that Meta thinks Facebook is weaker than other companies in the social media market.

Other documents in the trial also show that Meta was worried about competition. Zuckerberg also said last month that TikTok's success was a risk and had slowed Meta's growth.