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It was too good an opportunity for Meta to ignore: January 19, TikTok, one of his social media’s biggest rivalswas made to go dark across the United States when a new national security law went into effect. In the days and weeks before the ban, as millions of Americans scrambled to find a suitable alternative to TikTok, Meta found ways to promote Instagram and Facebook as the answer. The tech giant made a flurry of design tweaks, rolled out new features, and released ads that all positioned its platforms — and especially its video product, Reels — as direct competitors to TikTok.
Instagram has climbing back its in-app shopping initiatives in recent years, but on Friday, Meta showed off a new feature that appears to be directly ripped from TikTok ShopTikTok’s highly successful ecommerce platform. In a promotional videotwo shopping creators who work for Meta explain how influencers can now “display more prominently” the products they are marketing in Reels. Instead of putting an Amazon or Walmart link in the comments, they can add a banner that directs viewers to click on the article at the bottom of their videos – like how it works in TikTok Shop.
Some of Meta’s other efforts were just as timely. Just before TikTok stopped working for about 14 hours on Saturday, some people said that among the last things they saw on the platform were sponsored posts for Instagram. “Unsurprisingly, as TikTok drops tonight, Meta floods my FYP with Instagram ads,” said one person in a Bluesky post, referring to TikTok’s AI-powered For You Page feed. “In my last hour of TikTok I saw ads for Instagram,” said another person on Threads.
TikTok’s Ad Library, a transparency tool that allows anyone to find out what paid campaigns are running on the platform, shows that Meta run ten of sponsored videos on Instagram and Reels in January that were collectively viewed by millions of users. But the tool includes data from only a select number of countries – mostly in Europe – and does not cover what TikTok users have seen in the United States. Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Facebook, a number of people said they saw 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 in the applications by showing your TikTok profile link and the number of followers on your Facebook Page,” reads one version of the message.
Given the timing, “this feels a little passive aggressive,” one user wrote on X with a screenshot of the banner. “Facebook is trolling users by suggesting we add our TikTok accounts to our Facebook pages,” another person joked.
The prompt appears to be connected to a functionality Meta launched last month allowing users to see their YouTube, TikTok and Instagram handles and the number of followers on Facebook. However, the banner that people reported seeing in the last few days only mentioned TikTok by name. The feature makes it easier for followers of creators on other platforms to find and follow them on Facebook.
