- In comments planned during Wednesday’s congressional hearing on possible antitrust violations by tech companies, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg framed Facebook as a homegrown American success story whose future is threatened by China.
- In response, the CEO of TikTok, whose parent company, ByteDance, is based in China, criticized Facebook for calling its success “patriotic” and painting the viral app as the “enemy.”
- CEO Kevin Mayer, in the shared blog post on Wednesday morning, also called Facebook for his “copycat product” called Reels, a new TikTok-like format that will soon hit Instagram users in the United States.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
TikTok goes on the offensive as Facebook plans to argue with lawmakers that the American tech giant’s industry is an American success story.
TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer accused Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg of launching “evil attacks” against the viral video-sharing app that is “disguised as patriotism” in a blog post published Wednesday morning. Mayer’s note comes just hours before CEOs of America’s most powerful tech companies (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google) are slated to appear in front of Congress to face hours of questioning about potential regulatory violations. antitrust.
Zuckerberg’s comments to lawmakers, released Tuesday night, frame Facebook as an American company whose future is threatened by authoritarian China. In Wednesday’s post, Mayer tried to divert attention from TikTok’s ties to China, instead calling for social media to receive competition and increase its transparency and accountability efforts.
“TikTok has become the ultimate target, but we are not the enemy,” Mayer wrote. “Consumers can only benefit from the growth of healthy and successful platforms like TikTok and we will strive to continue to provide American creators, users and brands with an entertaining means of entertainment for many years to come.”
Wednesday’s post is one of the first public statements Mayer has made since he was named CEO of TikTok in June. The appointment of Mayer, a decades-long U.S.-based Disney executive, has been one of the platform’s most prominent efforts to demonstrate its distance from China, a relationship questioned due to its Chinese parent company ByteDance. .
Since TikTok came to the U.S. in 2018 and found a rabid user base of over 80 million, questions have been raised about the amount of access and influence the Chinese government has over the moderation of data and content on TikTok users. But TikTok’s ties to China have attracted more attention in recent months, as the president and his administration have said they are considering a ban on the app over those security concerns.
TikTok’s uncertain future in the US has also signaled the opportunity for Silicon Valley tech players to produce apps and features that take advantage of the app’s viral short-form video format. Zuckerberg’s Facebook is launching its competitor in a special quick clip, and it is expected that in early August for users in the US, a new TikTok-like format within Instagram called Reels.
In his blog post, Mayer criticized Reels as a “copycat product” and encouraged companies working on TikTok’s competitors to “introduce him.”
