Mark Zuckerberg and others at Meta thought TikTok was better than Meta.

The paper from February 2022 has talks between people at Meta about Facebook and Instagram. In one message, Zuckerberg said Facebook is now a "challenger" and is not as popular as before. He also said TikTok helps friends share things like funny pictures and feel together.

Mosseri said Facebook is not the main way people find new things anymore. He thinks YouTube is the main way now, but he believes TikTok will become more popular than YouTube because Meta has useful information.

Mosseri wrote that Facebook's best plan is to be the main place where people find new things. But it's interesting that TikTok uses only video and is doing much better than Facebook. He thinks they are making the social mobile market bigger and also taking people who watch TV, long videos, and Netflix.

Mosseri was right. In 2021, a study found that people in the U.S. watched TikTok more than YouTube. Another study in 2023 found that children from 4 to 18 years old spent much more time on TikTok than YouTube. Last year, TikTok started letting people upload videos up to 60 minutes long, just like on YouTube.

This week, Netflix added something like TikTok to its phone app. It shows short videos going down the screen. These videos are ideas for you to watch, chosen specially for each person.

In court, the U.S. government is trying to show that Meta broke the rules. They say Meta bought companies like Instagram and WhatsApp to be the only big social network. This paper could hurt their case because 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 use it every day or week, but people were not spending as much time on it as before.

He also said that TikTok can help people feel like they are part of a group.

It's social because you don't need to send things to friends. You can think they have already seen it.

Other executives also shared their opinions.

The head of WhatsApp, Will Cathcart, said that if you comment on TikTok videos you like, the computer learns. It then shows you and others similar videos later.

Stan Chudnovsky, who worked at Meta, said that Meta was now in a market with many companies, and these companies were making it harder for Meta to grow.

He said that just adding a new type of content, like 'Stories,' is not enough now. This is because people use many other social media apps, like TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube.

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

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

Other documents shown in court also show that Meta was worried about other companies. Last month, Zuckerberg said that TikTok was a problem for Meta and made it grow slower.