According to a network reuters news agency, ByteDance's total revenue in 2021 is about 58 billion US dollars (369.2 billion yuan), an increase of 70% year-on-year, of which advertising revenue accounts for 77%, reaching nearly 280 billion yuan, exceeding the total advertising revenue of 194.006 billion yuan in the national radio and television industry in 2020.
ByteDance then issued a rumor rebuttal on the evening of March 30, saying that after investigation, the online rumor that "ByteDance's advertising revenue in 2021 exceeds the total number of national television stations" is a rumor, and said that Reuters has never released news that ByteDance's advertising revenue exceeds 280 billion yuan.
However, according to the "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" learned from people close to ByteDance, while ByteDance's domestic advertising revenue declined, the compound annual growth rate of overseas TikTok advertising revenue reached 300%.
The unlimited scenery of TikTok has also caused great dissatisfaction from Facebook, the social big brother in the United States.
On March 30, the Washington Post published a report pointing out that Facebook's parent company, Meta, was working with tech consultancy Targeted Victory to plan a nationwide anti-TikTok campaign.
The Washington Post obtained internal emails from Targeted Victory, which the company cracked down on TikTok through media and lobbying campaigns, describing it as a threat to children and society at large.
In some emails, Targeted Victory asked its partners very specifically: "Are there any bad trends or stories about TikTok over there?" ”
"It would be nice to have a story similar to 'From Dancing to Harm: How TikTok Became the Most Harmful Social Media for Kids.'"
In a February email, a director at Targeted Victory said there was a need to get the message out that while Meta is the target at the moment, TikTok is the real threat.
For Silicon Valley, TikTok has undoubtedly become a formidable competitor. Last September, TikTok announced that its global monthly active users exceeded 1 billion. In December, web services company Cloudflare released its 2021 global traffic report, and TikTok beat Google to become the most visited online platform in the world in 2021.
The rapid development of TikTok is making social media big brother Facebook jealous. In 2021, former Facebook employee Francis Hauge exposed a large number of internal documents, including a report in which Facebook researchers said that teenagers spend "2 to 3 times more time" on TikTok than on Instagram, and Facebook's popularity among young people plummeted.
In addition to the anxiety of losing users, Facebook has also been mired in recent years, because monopolies, user privacy leaks, false information rampant, endangering the mental health of adolescents and other issues have been under pressure from public opinion. Shooting at TikTok may be a double consideration of competing for users and diverting artillery fire.
These emails, which had never been reported before. Targeted Victory declined to respond to the anti-TikTok movement revealed in the email, saying only that it had been working with Meta for several years and was "proud of the work we've done." ”
Meta spokesman Andy Stone argued: "We believe that all platforms, including TikTok, should face scrutiny consistent with their success." ”
A TikTok spokesperson said the so-called TikTok pop trend that appeared in some reports was not actually detected on the platform, and said TikTok was "very concerned" about it.
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The "Trends" on social media refers to some of the content that is popular among netizens, such as ice bucket challenges, finger dances, or muscle-show "lightsaber challenges", generally from one initiator to more and more people imitating.
And teens like to show exaggerated bad behavior on social networks, which has been plaguing all social media, including Facebook.
Targeted Victory reportedly has a Google docs called "Bad Clips of TikTok" that contains links to several news stories that say TikTok is the originator of some bad teen "trends." Targeted Victory encourages its collaborators to promote such stories in local markets to put pressure on lawmakers to take action.
One of the popular trends Targeted Victory tries to highlight is the "devious licks," which to put it bluntly, showing what you stole at school, a challenge that is very popular among European and American students.
The challenge is really hot on TikTok, with more than 70,000 videos released and 175 million views in just half a month last September. The teenagers who participated in the challenge did everything, from cell phones to the class, toilets, fire extinguishers, wall clocks in the classroom... None of them are immune.
According to that Google Docs, Targeted Victory published reports about TikTok's "theft challenge" in local media outlets in Washington, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, and other places.
Eventually, a senator wrote a letter calling on TikTok executives to testify before a Senate subcommittee, saying the app had been "repeatedly abused to encourage harmful behavior."
But embarrassingly, Anna Foley of podcast site Gimlet did an investigation and found that the "theft challenge" was actually actually spread on Facebook, not TikTok.
By October, Targeted Victory was working to spread rumors of the "TikTok Fan Teacher Challenge" in the local news media, but there was no such challenge on TikTok. The American media Insider was the first to find that the birthplace of the challenge was also Facebook.
While directing the fire to TikTok, Targeted Victory also worked to get local newspapers, radio shows and TV shows to "actively report" on Facebook.
Targeted Victory has signed up with dozens of PR firms across the United States to help influence public perception of TikTok.
In February, Meta released its fourth quarter 2021 financial report, Facebook's global monthly active users were 2.91 billion and daily active users were 1.93 billion, down 500,000 from the second quarter.
This was also the first time in Facebook's eighteen years since its founding that the number of active users had declined, and the company's founder and CEO Zuckerberg told investors at the time that TikTok was a major obstacle.
Subsequently, Meta announced the global opening of the short video feature Reels to all Facebook users, and the Reels feature was first launched on Instagram in August 2020 with the aim of wrenching the wrist with TikTok. This time the global opening, Zuckerberg stepped up the counterattack against TikTok.
Some of these anti-TikTok emails were sent out in February this year, and it's not hard to imagine that hitting TikTok for competitive reasons would be a major motivation for Facebook.
In addition to this, "diverting artillery fire" may also be a very important motivation.
In 2020, Zuckerberg mentioned TikTok in the opening remarks of the House Antitrust Subcommittee hearing, calling it the "fastest growing app," as if to appease concerns about Facebook's monopoly on social media.
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In addition to channeling media coverage, Targeted Victory also had the option of helping to publish op-eds and "reader letters" across the country targeting TikTok.
On March 12, the Denver Post published a letter from a reader. The letter comes from a "worried" "new parent" who said TikTok is harmful to children's mental health and also raised concerns about the privacy and security of their data: "Many even suspect that China is deliberately collecting behavioral data on our children". In addition, the letter supports the formation of a coalition of state attorneys generals to investigate the impact of TikTok on American youth. And this reader's letter was choreographed with the help of Targeted Victory.
On the same day, another very similar reader's letter, drafted by Targeted Victory, was published in the Dimon City Register. Mary McEay, chair of the Ankney District Democrats, signed the letter, and in a March 7 email, Targeted Victory touted her credentials and said that "having her name on the letter will have a big impact on lawmakers and interested parties." The email then encouraged partners in other states to have the opportunity to join the campaign as well.
In an email sent to collaborators last week, Targeted Victory asked each team to be "ready to share the review articles you're working on." Then you can see the representative of Targeted Victory asking: "Colorado and Iowa, can you talk about the review article in hand?" ”
The emails showed how effectively Targeted Victory was laying out anti-TikTok content, and in the process it was completely apparent that there was a company behind it that worked with Meta.
Targeted Victory's style of play is actually more like a way for politicians to fight each other. The company was founded in 2012 as a Republican digital consulting firm by the digital director of mitt Romney's campaign that year.
Launching attacks on competitors, Facebook is not new to this matter, and the action is always a bit political and has almost become a feature of Facebook.
In 2018, the Cambridge Analytica scandal sparked global outrage over Facebook's privacy rules, and Facebook partnered with Definers Public Affairs, a Washington-bashed consultancy, to lash out at critics and other tech companies, including Apple and Google.
The operation was reported by The New York Times, and Facebook subsequently said it had stopped working with Definers.
By 2019, Facebook was facing an antitrust investigation and pushed for a political organization designed to convince Lawmakers in Washington that Silicon Valley is vital to the U.S. economy.
According to data compiled by OpenSecrets, Meta spent more on federal lobbying than the six largest U.S. companies and industry groups, paying more than $20 million last year.
Original link:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/, The Washington Post, Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok