Leaders at Meta, like Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri, believed that TikTok was more successful than Meta.

The document from February 2022 has talks between some Meta leaders. They talk about Facebook and Instagram's plan and their place in the market. In one message, Zuckerberg said Facebook is like a "challenger" because it is not as popular or fast as before. He also said that TikTok helps friends feel connected because they see the same funny pictures.

Mosseri also said Facebook is now like a competitor. He said people don't use it first to find things anymore. He suggested that YouTube might be the best place to find things today. But he thinks TikTok will become better than YouTube later. This is because Meta has information about it.

Mosseri wrote that Facebook should be the main place to find new things. But he said it's interesting that TikTok, which is only video, is doing much better than Facebook. He thought that TikTok is making the social mobile market bigger. He also thought it is taking users from TV, long videos, and Netflix.

One study found that in 2021, people in the U.S. watched TikTok more than YouTube. Another study in 2023 said that children spent 60% more time on TikTok than on YouTube. Last year, TikTok started to let people upload videos up to 60 minutes long, just like on YouTube.

And this week, Netflix added a new way to watch short videos on its phone app, like TikTok.

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

For example, Zuckerberg said that Facebook was still the biggest app because many people used it every day or week, but people didn't spend the most time on it anymore.

He also said that TikTok helps people feel connected. 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 saw it.

Other executives also shared their opinions.

Will Cathcart from WhatsApp said that when people comment on a video on TikTok, the app learns what they like. Then, it shows them and others who commented similar videos later.

Stan Chudnovsky, who worked as a manager at Meta, said that Meta was now trying to do well in a business area where many other companies were taking some of their customers.

He said that just adding new things, like Stories, is not enough because people use many other apps like TikTok and Twitter.

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

But he wasn't sure how far behind Meta was with the technology for creating things and the technical details. The document suggests that Meta thinks Facebook is not the strongest player in the social media market.

Other papers shown in court also prove Meta was afraid of competition. Last month, Zuckerberg said that TikTok was a risk to Meta and made it grow more slowly.