In a court hearing brought against Meta for violating competition laws, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg testified about the impact that TikTok’s entry had on the market. Referring to the app as a serious competitor, he acknowledged that his company had experienced it as a major threat since 2018, according to Rks News.
“TikTok’s success was a threat to Meta’s business,” Zuckerberg testified, adding that “the short-video app became a primary priority and a daunting competitor when it arrived in 2018.”
These remarks were made during the review of a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is seeking the divestiture of Instagram and WhatsApp from Meta. During his testimony, Zuckerberg emphasized the concrete impact that TikTok’s market entry had on Meta’s growth: “Our company observed that its growth slowed dramatically when TikTok became popular.”
TikTok was created following its merger with Musical.ly, which was acquired by ByteDance in 2017. This development occurred shortly before Meta halted the publication of active user data for Facebook in its quarterly reports—a decision that many analysts linked to the mounting competitive pressure.
