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Illustration by Alex Castro \/ The Verge<\/cite><\/p>\n Facebook\u2019s parent company, Meta, has been paying one of the most prominent Republican consulting firms to run a nationwide campaign to sow distrust about one of the company\u2019s top competitors, TikTok, according to a new report from The Washington Post<\/em> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n The firm, Targeted Victory, reportedly planted op-eds and letters to the editor in major local and regional newspapers across the country. A Targeted Victory director told staff that the firm needed to \u201cget the message out that 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,\u201d according to emails obtained by The Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n News of Facebook\u2019s decision to hire the firm comes only a few weeks after the company declared that it was losing users for the first time in its 18-year history. Meta\u2019s recent earnings report said that Facebook\u2019s active users dropped by almost 500,000 at the end of last year. <\/p>\n Several of Targeted Victory\u2019s op-eds contained links to negative news coverage about TikTok and were often bylined by influential community figures and politicians, including Democrats. The Post <\/em>reported that none of the columns disclosed their connection to the Facebook-funded firm.<\/p>\n Over the last few years, Facebook has been under fire by Congress for allegedly holding an illegal monopoly in the social media industry. During a 2020 hearing with tech CEOs, including Facebook\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg, lawmakers cited internal company documents suggesting that Zuckerberg would go \u201cdestroy mode\u201d if Instagram, a then-nascent competitor, refused to be sold to the social media giant. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen the dominant platform threatens its potential rivals, that should not be a normal business practice,\u201d Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said at the time. <\/p>\n Targeted Victory is one of the biggest vendors for Republican campaigns. In 2020, the firm earned over $230 million, and its largest clients were from groups like the pro-Trump super PAC, America First Action. Republicans have been some of TikTok\u2019s harshest critics. Lawmakers like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) have pushed for the app to be investigated for censorship, and former President Donald Trump signed an executive order to ban it outright.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the order went nowhere, and President Joe Biden revoked it last year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Illustration by Alex Castro \/ The Verge Facebook\u2019s parent company, Meta, has been paying one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cTikTok is the real threat\u201d<\/q><\/p>\n