For a long time, Facebook, the site created by Mark Zuckerberg, was the main social network on the planet. Despite still being a giant tech company and retaining a good chunk of the market, new apps are increasingly challenging Meta's throne. Because of this, Facebook has been forced to play dirty against its main competitor, TikTok. The Chinese app was the most used app of 2021, gaining more and more space among users.
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How is TikTok stealing Facebook users?
Basically, this is the first time that Facebook is losing so many users, especially young people and teenagers. This has been happening because TikTok has a format capable of retaining this audience, through short videos and an algorithm that manages to please all tastes. As a result, the app's numbers keep growing, reaching more than 3 billion downloads.
Even Facebook showed interest in buying the Chinese social network, but the negotiations did not go forward. In this way, as with SnapChat, the company tried to integrate services similar to the competitor on its platforms. However, this time, the method did not work.
How does the Meta group try to harm TikTok?
Facebook was denounced for hiring a consultancy to link the Chinese application to dangerous content for young people and teenagers. For this, they used some “challenges” present on the platform to point out that TikTok encourages aggression against teachers and vandalism in schools. Soon, a long-running nationwide smear campaign was mounted.
The aim was to appeal to parents and guardians of young people. However, the plan backfired, as there is no evidence that this trend started with TikTok. Also, apparently, the challenges started right on Facebook.
Therefore, this is the first time that the technology giant has been threatened by a competitor and none of its strategies work. In the end, the dispute between the two companies could bring big changes to the social networking market.