May 9th, 2025
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Mark Zuckerberg and others at Meta thought TikTok was doing better than them.
A paper from February 2022 shows talks between bosses at Meta about Facebook and Instagram. One boss, Zuckerberg, said Facebook was like a "challenger" and was not as popular as before, while TikTok was good because friends saw the same things, he said.
Mosseri said Facebook is not the main way people find things anymore. He thinks YouTube is the main way now, but he believes TikTok will become more popular than YouTube later because Meta has a lot of information.
Mosseri wrote that Facebook's best plan is to be the main place where people find new things. He also said it's strange that TikTok only has videos but is doing much better than Facebook. He thinks TikTok is making more people use social media on their phones. He also believes they are taking users from TV, long videos, and Netflix.
Mosseri was right. In 2021, a study said that people in the U.S. watched TikTok more than YouTube. Another study found that in 2023, young people watched TikTok 60% more than YouTube. Last year, TikTok started to let people put up videos that are up to 60 minutes long to be like YouTube.
Just this week, Netflix put something new in its phone app that is like TikTok. It shows short videos that go up and down, and they are chosen just for you.
In the court case, the US government says Meta broke the rules by buying Instagram and WhatsApp. They say Meta wanted to control social media. This paper could hurt the government's case because it shows that people at Meta said TikTok was much better than Facebook.
For example, Zuckerberg said that even though Facebook had the most users every day or week, people spent more time on other apps.
He also said that TikTok helps people feel like they are part of something together. For example, if you and your friends like the same things, you will probably see the same videos on TikTok, he explained.
The CEO said, "It's social because you don't need to send things to a friend. You can think they have already seen them. It would be great if we could do this with topics and other things on Facebook."
Other executives also shared their opinions.
Will Cathcart from WhatsApp said that if you comment on TikTok videos you like, the app will show you and others who comment the same videos more often.
Stan Chudnovsky, who was a manager at Meta, said that Meta was now trying to grow in an area where many small companies were taking some of their business.
Adding a new format is not enough now. People can go to many other places online,
John Hegeman, who worked with ads, said TikTok was the best for short videos and tools to make them. But he thought Meta could be as good if people who make videos also put them on Reels.
But he was not sure how far behind Meta was with the technology for making things. The document shows that Meta thinks Facebook is not as strong as other companies in social media.
Other papers shown in court also show that Meta was afraid of other companies. Last month, Zuckerberg said that TikTok was a problem for Meta and made it grow more slowly.
May 9th, 2025
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