A company spokesperson said on 8th October that Facebook and Instagram owner Meta has suspended advertising by TikTok‘s Chinese parent ByteDance on its platforms in the U.S. and in a few other countries.
It is a further sign of Meta’s competition with advertising rivals and creators, and particularly video-sharing app TikTok, owned by ByteDance, which has become one of Meta’s biggest rivals for user engagement.
Meta’s ban will go into effect in the US, Canada, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam, and will also affect third-party advertisers running campaigns via links to TikTok and other ByteDance-owned brands in these countries.
Adhering to that rule will help prevent “an arms race with a competitor trying to get users out of our apps,” Meta said. It’s a standard practice across industries not to promote a competitor, and we’ll keep doing this in terms of product quality and user experience.
Reuters did not immediately get a comment from TikTok or ByteDance on the move by Meta.
The TikTok website indicates that it does not feature links to open and log into other social media apps. Users are still able to link to their profiles that can route people to those websites.
Urge for TikTok, YouTube to take on teen safety
Meta has been calling on TikTok and YouTube to take steps it agreed to make in August in its settlement with the United States states over social media harms to teens, which was up to $18 billion.
Meta in August agreed to impose daily usage limits and restrict nighttime usage by children who use Facebook and Instagram, and enhance measures to prevent children from accessing age-restricted content.
TikTok has not made a public comment on Meta’s campaign, but it settled with Alabama in September, which stipulates that the social media platform impose new usage limits and improve age-verification systems for users in the state, while claiming it put children at risk and gave consumers false assurances of its safety.
TikTok is a majority American-owned joint venture that’s being operated in the US after a partnership that would ensure the platform’s user data is not accessed by Chinese companies and prevent a ban on an app used by over 200 million Americans.
