Facebook’s parent company, Meta, reportedly hired a Republican lobby in the United States to create a national fake news campaign about the dangers of using the TikTok social network.
According to The Washington Post, Facebook paid Republican consultancy Targeted Victory to publish op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional media outlets to undermine its main Chinese-owned competitor, ByteDance.
This has been confirmed by several employees of Targeted Victory, who have leaked a series of emails to this medium to show that they developed a media campaign to alert younger American users of the dangers of using the application.
One of those emails includes a statement of intent from one of the directors of this Republican lobby group, who noted that TikTok is the “number one app for sharing data from the youth and teens who use it.”
In this disinformation campaign, members of Targeted Victory were also encouraged to highlight that, due to the rise of TikTok, the platform was managing to divert attention from Meta’s antitrust and privacy measures.
In other emails, this Republican lobby urged its partners and employees to filter alleged dangerous behavior associated with TikTok that could put teenagers at risk in the local media.
In relation to this, The Washington Post reports that a spokesperson for the Chinese platform indicated that TikTok was “deeply concerned” about “the revival of local media reports on alleged trends” that had not been noticed on its platform.
From this newspaper they have reported that Targeted Victory has refused to clarify more details about the campaign and has only indicated that it is “proud” of the work it has done during the years it has been collaborating with Meta.
‘fake news’ and negative coverage
To further this false coverage, Targeted Victory created a document called ‘Bad TikTok Clips’ in which they included links to local news stories of questionable credibility that cited TikTok as the source of dangerous teen trends.
One of those stories was related to a challenge called ‘tortuous licking’ and that reached local media in different US states, such as Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington DC and Rhode Island.
However, according to research by Gimlet Podcast Network Producer Anna Foley, rumors of these challenges began on Facebook and not TikTok.
Another of the challenges that supposedly existed in TikTok and that from this ‘lobby’ they expanded by supposed orders from Facebook to different media outlets is that of slapping a teacher, which did not occur on the Chinese platform.
Due to the spread of news like this, Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal wrote a letter asking the executives of the Chinese platform to testify before the Senate subcommittee.
On the other hand, The Washington Post has highlighted in this article that, while Targeted Victory worked for the technology company, several regional media outlets published articles praising the virtues of Facebook, such as its efforts to support and integrate proprietary companies. blacks on your platform.
Among some of the examples highlighted in these media is the publication in the Denver Post of a letter to the editor supposedly orchestrated by this ‘lobby’. It claimed that TikTok was harmful to children’s mental health and called into question its data privacy practices.
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