The leaked recording of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's meeting with employees over the summer has revealed the social media company's plan to eliminate the Chinese app TikTok.
How Facebook Plans To Eliminate TikTok
For the uninitiated, TikTok is a video-sharing app launched by the developer ByteDance in China in 2016. Since then, it has experienced rapid growth and become popular among the younger internet users around the world.
So in July, during one of Facebook's internal meetings, an employee asked Zuckerberg whether he was worried about the immediate success of TikTok. Zuckerberg admitted that TikTok is a major competitor and he already has a plan of attack laid out to mitigate its meteoric rise.
"TikTok, which is built by this company Beijing ByteDance, is really the first consumer internet product built by one of the Chinese tech giants that is doing quite well around the world," he told employees in the leaked audio released by The Verge. "It's starting to do well in the US, especially with young folks. It's growing really quickly in India. I think it's past Instagram now in India in terms of scale."
To combat TikTok, Facebook is working on a competing standalone app. It is called Lasso and it has already been launched in markets where TikTok does not have a foothold yet such as Mexico.
Zuckerberg added that the company will first monitor how Lasso performs in these markets before releasing the app globally to compete with TikTok. However, since its launch in November, Lasso has only been installed 640,000. Meanwhile, TikTok has 1.4 billion users outside China, according to Tech Crunch.
In addition, Facebook will take a "number of approaches" on Instagram. In particular, the Explore tab will push Stories.
Last month, Instagram launched a branded account called @creators to encourage influencers and wannabe influencers to continue producing content on the app, especially longform videos for IGTV.
Mark Zuckerberg Vows To Fight Anyone Who Wants To Break Up Facebook
Zuckerberg also spoke about the pressure to break up big tech, including Facebook, from influential figures such as Senator Elizabeth Warren who is running for president in 2020. Zuckerberg said that, even if he does not want to go against the federal government, if someone tries to threaten the social media company, there is no choice but to "go to the mat and you fight."
"[I]f [Warren] gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge," he stated, "and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge."
