Facebook hires GOP consulting firm in DC area to smear rival TikTok

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In an effort to eliminate competition and deflect privacy and monopolistic concerns, social media giant Meta hired a major Republican consulting firm to run a national campaign against TikTok.

Key Players

Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as Facebook, Inc., is a multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in Menlo Park, California. One of the most valuable and influential tech companies in the world, it is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, alongside other subsidiaries.

TikTok, a video-based social media service owned by Chinese company ByteDance and originally founded in Beijing, has an American headquarters in Culver City, California. Since launching in 2016, TikTok has rapidly grown around the world, surpassing 2 billion mobile downloads worldwide by October 2020. Because of various connections to the Chinese government, TikTok has been targeted by bans and attempted bans by many countries that feel it poses a security threat.  

Targeted Victory, an Arlington, Virginia-based consulting firm, is a member of Stagwell, a global marketing and communications group. Founded in 2012 by members of the digital team for the presidential campaign of Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah), Targeted Victory has worked with Facebook on advertising, congressional hearings, and other projects. 

Further Details

Internal emails from Targeted Victory shared with The Washington Post indicate various communication strategies to sway public opinion against TikTok. One director of the firm said, “While Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using.” 

Firm employees were also encouraged to evade public and governmental criticism against Meta by stressing TikTok’s prominence and potential threat as a foreign corporation. 

“Bonus point if we can fit this into a broader message that the current bills/proposals aren’t where [state attorneys general] or members of Congress should be focused,” one staffer wrote, suggesting lawmakers should propose policy to curb TikTok’s influence.

As part of the campaign, Targeted Victory submitted letters to the editors of local newspapers around the country, including in the Denver Post and the Des Moines Register. 

On March 21, 2022, the Denver Post ran a letter from a “concerned” “new parent” claiming TikTok posed serious harm to children’s mental health, all while raising concerns about data privacy and the potential threat of Chinese influence. 

That same day, the Des Moines Register ran a negative letter about TikTok signed by Mary McAdams, chair of the Ankeny Area Democrats, a credential Targeted Victory employees said would “carry a lot of weight with legislators and stakeholders” in internal emails.  

None of the published letters to the editor or op-eds that Targeted Victory has worked on have been traced back to the firm, or its association with Meta, The Post reported.

Meta’s hiring of Targeted Victory came at a time when the tech giant was trying to retain users and capitalize on advertising revenue amid declining numbers, especially among young subscribers. Additionally, ongoing negative attention has placed Meta under the microscope, including antitrust scrutiny, alarming ethics and misinformation revelations from former employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen, and concerns around data collection and privacy. 

In October 2021, The Verge reported on internal Facebook research showing that teenage users in the United States had dropped by 13% since 2019 and were expected to drop by another 45% by 2023. In the same span, young adults between the ages of 20 and 30 were predicted to fall by 4%. 

According to Business Standard, TikTok earned $11.6 billion in worldwide ad revenues during 2021 and was predicted to bring in $23.6 billion in ad revenue by 2024. Meta registered $118 billion in ad revenue in 2021.

In February 2022, Forbes and The Verge reported Facebook lost approximately half a million daily active users (DAUs) in the fourth quarter of 2021, falling from 1.93 billion to 1.929 billion DAUs. 

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta chief executive, told investors TikTok was a significant but not the sole roadblock to Facebook’s continued growth. In a speech at Georgetown University in 2019, Zuckerberg also criticized TikTok for reports that it had banned or restricted certain topics unfavorable to the Chinese government.

Historically, Facebook has turned to consulting firms and advocacy groups to improve its public reputation and help it weather scandals. In May 2020, it even launched its own tech advocacy group, American Edge. And according to data compiled by research group OpenSecrets, in 2021, Meta paid over $20 million to lobby the federal government, making it the seventh-largest spender among all U.S. companies and industry groups.

Outcome 

TikTok, Meta, Targeted Victory spokespeople respond to campaign

The Post article alleged that Targeted Victory pushed for negative media coverage regarding dangerous trends purported to have started on TikTok. However, trends like “devious licks,” a stunt in which students vandalize and steal school property, actually originated on Facebook, and the “slap a teacher TikTok challenge” reportedly never existed.   

Hilary McQuaide, a TikTok spokesperson, said the company was “deeply concerned that the stoking of local media reports on alleged trends that have not been found on the platform could cause real world harm,” The Hollywood Reporter noted. 

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said, “We believe all platforms, including TikTok, should face a level of scrutiny consistent with their growing success.”

On March 30, 2022, Zac Moffat, CEO of Targeted Victory, tweeted that The Post report mischaracterized the firm’s work, and that the key points of the story were false. “We tried to reach out to The Washington Post to further talk through them, but never got a response,” Moffat wrote. 

“Targeted Victory’s corporate practice manages bipartisan teams on behalf of our clients. It is public knowledge we have worked with Meta for several years and we are proud of the work we have done,” Moffat added. 

He also commented on facts surrounding the letters to the editor, tweeting that The Post article seemed to imply 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. We had hoped to not have them included in this manufactured story out of respect for their personal privacy.”