According to a recent filing in the US Federal Trade Commission's antitrust lawsuit against Meta, published on Monday, key figures within the company, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri, were of the opinion that TikTok was outperforming Meta in its core areas.

The document, from February 2022, contains discussions among several Meta executives regarding the strategic approach and market standing of Facebook and Instagram. In one exchange, Zuckerberg characterised Facebook as a "challenger" that had "lost its mindshare and momentum," adding that TikTok fosters a "feeling of shared context" where friends encounter the same cultural references, he stated.

Mosseri concurred that Facebook should now be considered a challenger, asserting it was no longer the primary discovery platform. He suggested YouTube might currently hold that position, but predicted TikTok would eventually overtake the Google-owned video platform, based on Meta's available data.

Mosseri posited that Facebook's most intuitive differentiation strategy lay in becoming the primary discovery interface. However, he found it noteworthy that TikTok, being exclusively video-based, was significantly outperforming them. He speculated that TikTok was expanding the social mobile market while simultaneously encroaching upon the user bases of television, long-form video, and Netflix.

Mosseri's prediction proved accurate: a 2021 study revealed TikTok surpassed YouTube in average watch time in the U.S. Furthermore, research by Qustodio, a parental control software provider, indicated that in 2023, young people aged four to eighteen dedicated sixty per cent more time to TikTok than YouTube. In a clear attempt to compete with YouTube, TikTok commenced enabling uploads of up to an hour last year.

This week, Netflix rolled out a feature within its mobile app that emulates the TikTok experience, presenting a vertical video feed of suggested content, tailored to each user's preferences.

However, during the trial, the U.S. government endeavours to demonstrate that Meta contravened competition legislation through the acquisition of entities such as Instagram and WhatsApp, thereby establishing a social networking monopoly. A document of this nature could undermine the case, considering that, within Meta, executives were deliberating the significant competitive disadvantage Facebook faced against TikTok.

For instance, Zuckerberg highlighted that while Facebook continued to be the largest application in terms of daily or weekly active users, it had ceased to be the leading application by time spent.

He further noted that TikTok facilitates a sense of shared context, explaining that mutual interests among individuals are likely to result in encountering similar content within their respective feeds.

This makes it naturally social because you can just think your friends have seen the content, instead of having to send it to them," the CEO said. "It would be great if we could get to this level with different topics and separate content on Facebook."

Several other executives also interjected their perspectives.

WhatsApp chief, Will Cathcart, highlighted how users of TikTok commenting within specific niches would gradually be exposed to the same videos by the platform's algorithm, along with other commenters.

Stan Chudnovsky, who served as a Vice President and General Manager at Meta at the time, stated that Meta had entered a highly fragmented market where numerous companies were impeding their expansion.

He added that just adding a new format, like they did with Stories, is not enough anymore because there are many other places for people to go, mentioning other popular social apps in the U.S. like TikTok, Twitter, iMessage, Snap, YouTube, Reddit, and Discord.

At the time, John Hegeman, the VP of advertisements and now chief revenue officer, acknowledged TikTok's undeniable leadership in domains such as brief video content, ranking functionalities, and creative instruments, yet expressed his belief that Meta could diminish this advantage by persuading creators to also publish content on Reels.

However, he expressed reservations regarding Meta's relative standing in the domains of machine learning, technical infrastructure, and creative tools. The document implies that Meta perceives Facebook as having a disadvantaged position within the social media landscape.

This document is not the only one that has appeared during the trial to show that Meta is afraid of competition. Last month, Zuckerberg himself said that TikTok's success was a danger to Meta's business and had made it grow more slowly.