Some leaders at Meta, like Mark Zuckerberg, thought TikTok was better than Meta. This was written in a new paper for a lawsuit.

A paper from February 2022 shows what people at Meta talked about for Facebook and Instagram's plans. In one message, Zuckerberg said Facebook is a "challenger" and has "lost popularity and speed." He also said that TikTok makes a "feeling of shared context" where friends see the same popular pictures and videos.

Mosseri also said Facebook is now a competitor. He said people don't use it to find things as much as before. He thought YouTube might be the best place to find things now. But he believed TikTok would become more popular than YouTube later. He said this is because Meta had information about what people like.

Mosseri wrote, "Facebook should be the main place to find new things. But it's interesting that TikTok uses only videos and is doing much better than us. I think they are making the social mobile market bigger. They are also taking people away from watching TV, long videos, and Netflix."

Mosseri was right. In 2021, a study found that people in the U.S. spent more time watching TikTok than YouTube. Another study in 2023 showed that children watched TikTok 60% more than YouTube. Last year, TikTok started letting people upload videos up to 60 minutes long, like on YouTube.

This week, Netflix put a new thing in their phone app that is like TikTok. It shows short videos going up and down, suggesting videos the person using the app might like.

In court, the U.S. government is trying to show that Meta broke rules when it bought Instagram and WhatsApp. They say Meta wanted to be the only big social media company. A paper like this could hurt their case because it shows that people at Meta were talking about how TikTok was doing better than Facebook.

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

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

The CEO said, "This makes it social because you don't need to send things to friends. You can think they have already seen them. If we could do this with different topics and things on Facebook, that would be great."

Other executives also gave their opinions.

Will Cathcart from WhatsApp said that if you comment on a TikTok video about something you like, TikTok will show you and other people who comment the same videos more often.

Stan Chudnovsky, who worked at Meta, said Meta was now trying to do better than other companies. He said there were many companies, and they were making it harder for Meta to grow.

Just adding a new style, like we did with Stories, is not enough now. People have many other places to go online, he also said. He gave examples of other popular apps in the U.S., like TikTok, Twitter, iMessage, Snap, YouTube, Reddit, and Discord.

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

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

This paper is not the only one in the trial that shows Meta was afraid of other companies. Last month, Zuckerberg said that TikTok was bad for Meta's business and made it grow more slowly.