Mark Zuckerberg says TikTok slowed Meta’s growth

In Meta’s antitrust trial on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified that TikTok’s success was a risk to Meta’s business, saying the short-form video app was a “top priority” and a “highly urgent” competitive threat when it arrived in 2018, according to Bloomberg and other outlets. The reports come from a packed first week of testimony in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s trial against the social networking giant. If the FTC’s lawyers prevail, the trial could potentially require Meta to spin out Instagram or WhatsApp as separate companies. Notably, Zuckerberg admitted on Wednesday that TikTok’s arrival had directly impacted Meta, saying his company had observed that its “growth slowed down dramatically” when the TikTok became popular. He also said the ByteDance-owned app has continued to be a focus of Meta’s competitive efforts for several years. ByteDance purchased Musical.ly in 2017, and merged it with TikTok the following year. Around the same time, Meta (then known as Fa ... Read full article.