It was an opportunity too good for Meta to ignore: on January 19, TikTok, one of its sites, launched Biggest social media competitoris set to go dark across the United States when A.J New national security law entered into force. In the days and weeks leading up to the ban, while millions of Americans were scrambling to find a suitable alternative to TikTok, Meta found ways to promote Instagram and Facebook as a solution. The tech giant made a flurry of design tweaks, rolled out new features, and ran ads that positioned all of its platforms — especially its video product, Reels — as direct competitors to TikTok.
Instagram has it Reduce it In-app shopping initiatives in recent years, but on Friday, Meta showed off a new feature that appears to be taken directly from Tik Tok storeTikTok, the widely successful e-commerce platform. In a Promotional videotwo Shopping creators working for Meta explained how influencers can now “prominently display the products they market” in Reels. Instead of putting an Amazon or Walmart link in the comments, they can add a banner directing viewers to click on the item at the bottom of their videos — just like how TikTok Shop works.
Some of Meta’s other efforts were equally important. Right before TikTok I stopped working For about 14 hours on Saturday, some people reported that among the last things they saw on the platform were sponsored Instagram posts. “Not surprisingly, with TikTok down tonight, my junior year Meta is being inundated with Instagram ads,” one person said in a post on Bluesky, referring to TikTok’s AI-powered For You Page feed. “In my last hour on TikTok, I saw ads for Instagram,” said another person on Threads.
TikTok’s Ad Library, a transparency tool that allows anyone to search for paid campaigns running on the platform, shows Meta has been turned on Dozens From promotional videos about Instagram and Reels in January that were collectively watched by millions of users. But the tool includes data from only a select number of countries — mostly in Europe — and doesn’t cover ads that TikTok users in the United States may have seen. Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Facebook, a number of people reported seeing a different promotion appear on their news feeds last week, encouraging them to link their TikTok accounts to their Facebook pages. “Build your social presence across apps by showing your TikTok profile link and number of followers on your Facebook page,” one copy of the message read.
Given the timing, “this seems a bit passive aggressive,” one user wrote on X with a screenshot of the logo. “Facebook is trolling users by suggesting we add our TikTok accounts to our Facebook pages,” another person joked.
The claim appears to be connected to a feature Meta was launched last month which allows users to view their YouTube, TikTok and Instagram accounts and the number of followers on Facebook. However, the banner people reported seeing in recent days only mentioned TikTok by name. This feature makes it easier for followers of creators on other platforms to find and follow them on Facebook.
