The fight for market dominance has become ugly between Mark Zuckerberg-owned Meta and Chinese short-video app TikTok. According to certain emails accessed by The Washington Post, Facebook’s parent company Meta has been paying political consulting firm “Targeted Victory” to run a smear campaign against its Chinese rival.

As part of the smear campaign, news stories, opinion pieces, and letters to editors blaming TikTok for harmful teen behaviour are allegedly being rolled out by Targeted Victory. The primary objective of the campaign is to showcase TikTok in a bad light and make the app a threat in the public eye.

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Among the most popular "anti-TikTok" news pieces allegedly popularised by Meta and its "partner-in-crime" were about the short-video app sharing customer personal data with Chinese authorities. Similarly, Targeted Victory pushed news stories alleging that the “devious licks challenge” -- as part of which students were vandalising school property -- originated on TikTok while in reality, the trend had started on Facebook.

The report adds that Meta has been trying to get politicians to crack down on TikTok while simultaneously promoting Facebook's worth.

When asked by The Post, Targeted Victory didn't comment on the anti-TikTok campaign, but said it was "proud" of serving Meta for several years. On the other hand, TikTok expressed “deep concern” about the promotion of local news reports that “incorrectly” blamed it for hurtful trends.

Earlier, leaked documents from Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen had revealed that teens were spending up to "2-3X" more time on TikTok in comparison to Meta-run Instagram.

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(Edited by : Thomas Abraham)