Meta is banning TikTok ads across its platforms

‘We don’t have to run ads from a competitor whose goal is to pull people off our apps.‘

‘We don’t have to run ads from a competitor whose goal is to pull people off our apps.‘

by Emma Roth

Oct 9, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

Meta has banned ads from TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance across the US and several other countries as the rivalry between the major social media operators heats up, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. The ban, which went into effect on Thursday, restricts ads and paid marketing messages from ByteDance, along with third-party ads that link to TikTok.

“We don’t have to run ads from a competitor whose goal is to pull people off our apps,” Meta spokesperson Christopher Sgro said in a statement to The Verge. “Declining promotional services to a competitor is a normal business practice across industries. We will continue to compete on product quality and user experience.”

The move comes just months after Meta agreed to a major child safety settlement, requiring it to pay $17 billion and add new restrictions for teens. Meta has since called on TikTok and YouTube to impose similar safeguards, including by waging an ad campaign that TikTok reportedly declined to share on its platform. TikTok has also stopped allowing users to include links that “open or log you into other social media apps,” according to its support page

Though TikTok in the US is now controlled by a joint venture majority-owned by US-based companies, ByteDance remains a major shareholder. In addition to pulling TikTok ads in the US, the policy will also restrict them in Canada, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

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