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

A paper from February 2022 shows talks between leaders at Meta. They talked about plans for Facebook and Instagram and where they are in the market. In one message, Zuckerberg said Facebook is a "challenger" and has "lost popularity and speed." He also said that TikTok makes people feel like they share things, because friends see the same funny pictures.

Mosseri also said that Facebook is now like a competitor. It is not the main place where people find new things. He said that YouTube might be the best place to find things now. But he thought TikTok would become more popular than YouTube later. This is because Meta had the information.

Mosseri wrote that it is normal for Facebook to be the main place where people find new things. But he said it is interesting that TikTok uses only videos and is doing much better than Facebook. He also said he thinks they are making the social mobile market bigger and also taking people 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 used TikTok much more than YouTube in 2023. Last year, TikTok started letting people upload longer videos, like YouTube.

This week, Netflix added a new feature to its mobile app that is similar to TikTok. It offers a feed of short videos that are recommended and personalized for each user.

In the trial, the US government is trying to show that Meta broke the rules by buying Instagram and WhatsApp. They say Meta wanted to be the only big social media company. This paper could hurt their case because inside Meta, people were saying that TikTok was much more popular than Facebook.

For example, Zuckerberg said that even though many people used Facebook every day or week, they were not spending the most time on it.

He also said that TikTok helps people feel like they share things. If you and your friends like the same things, you will probably see the same things on TikTok, he explained.

This makes it social because you don't need to send things to friends. You can just think they have seen it. If we could do this with topics and content on Facebook, that would be good.

Other executives also contributed to the discussion.

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

Stan Chudnovsky, who worked at Meta, said that Meta was now trying to do well in an area where many small companies were taking some of their customers.

Just adding a new type of post, like Stories, is not enough now. People use many other apps, he said, naming popular apps in the U.S. like TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube.

John Hegeman, who worked with ads, said TikTok was better at short videos and tools for making them. But he believed Meta could catch up if video creators also shared their videos on Reels.

But he was not sure how far behind Meta was with the technology and tools. A document shows that Meta thinks Facebook is not as strong as other social media companies.

This is one of several papers shown in court that show Meta was worried about other companies. Mark Zuckerberg also said last month that TikTok was a problem for Meta and made it grow slower.