Facebook Paid GOP Firm To Plant Anti-TikTok Articles

The Washington Post reports:

Facebook parent company Meta is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok.

The campaign includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and pushing to draw political reporters and local politicians into helping take down its biggest competitor.

Employees with the firm, Targeted Victory, worked to undermine TikTok through a nationwide media and lobbying campaign portraying the fast-growing app, owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance, as a danger to American children and society.

Read the full article.

The firm, Targeted Victory, pushed local operatives across the country to boost messages calling TikTok a threat to American children.

“Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger,’” one campaign director said. https://t.co/K2kK9BgbgQ

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 30, 2022