Facebook allegedly paid a political consulting firm, Target Victory, to launch a nationwide political and media campaign against TikTok, according to a Washington Post report.
Facebook’s anti-TikTok plan, according to the report, involves searching for “bad” trends in the app and triggering worrying alarms in media with influence on local markets.
These included a Devious Licks Challenge, which encouraged property damage to schools, and reports of a rumored Slap a Teacher Challenge, which never existed.
Anti-TikTok opinion pieces, originally created by Targeted Victory, appeared earlier this month in the Denver Post and the Des Moines Register.
One Targeted Victory employee said in an internal email that the goal “would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger: how TikTok has become the most harmful social media space for kids.”
Target Victory boss Zac Moffatt tweeted that the Post’s report misrepresented their work and “key points are simply false.”
“The story infers that the words of the letters to the editor were not the authors’ own, nor did they know of Meta’s involvement. That is false. They will confirm that,” Moffatt said.