Meta bans ads from TikTok on its apps

ESCALATING FEUD: ‘We don’t have to run ads from a competitor whose goal is to pull people off our apps,’ a Meta spokesperson said about the complete restriction

Meta Platforms Inc banned advertisements in the US from ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動), the former controlling owner of TikTok, intensifying the competition with the popular social video site.

On Thursday, Meta began implementing a complete restriction on ads and paid marketing messages placed on its platforms by ByteDance, the Chinese company that remains in charge of key parts of TikTok in the US.

The ban is to take effect in the US, Canada, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam, according to Meta, and also extend to third-party advertisers running campaigns that link to TikTok and other ByteDance properties in those countries.

Signage on the Meta store in Burlingame, California, is pictured on Oct. 23 last year.

Photo: Bloomberg

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

Meta and TikTok have competed neck-and-neck for years, even with a key imbalance in that rivalry: TikTok has been able to operate in Meta’s most important market, the US, while Meta has been unable to do so in TikTok’s most crucial market, China. However, that competition took a more heated turn in August after Meta agreed to a historic US$18 billion settlement with US states requiring it to implement new safety features for minors across its Instagram and Facebook apps.

Since then, Meta has been pressuring TikTok and Google’s YouTube to commit to making similar changes, suggesting it cannot solve industrywide child safety problems on its own.

TikTok has remained publicly silent on the matter, ratcheting up the tension between the companies as Meta grapples with what it sees as yet another competitive disadvantage.

Last month, TikTok enacted a number of measures to make it harder to shift from its app to other social platforms, including by eliminating dedicated Instagram links from its users’ profiles. It also rejected ads from Meta demanding that TikTok commit to comparable concessions on child safety.

Soon after the settlement with the state attorneys general, Meta ran ads in top newspapers upping its pressure campaign. Meta executives have also called out TikTok publicly for failing to show up at a recent Office of the Surgeon General event on the harms of excessive screen use, and for dropping out of a national security meeting with the House Select Committee on China to avoid broader scrutiny amid its child safety litigation.

Other consumer tech platforms have also introduced friction between its products and its competitors. The Information reported last month that OpenAI told advertising partners that it would not accept ads for image and audio-generation products that competed with its own.