It was an opportunity too good for Meta to ignore: on January 19, TikTok, one of its social media’s biggest rivalswas about to go dark across the United States when a new national security law came into force. In the days and weeks leading up to the ban, as millions of Americans scrambled to find a suitable alternative to TikTok, Meta found ways to promote Instagram and Facebook as a response. The tech giant made a slew of design tweaks, rolled out new features, and ran ads that positioned all of its platforms — and particularly its video product, Reels — as direct competitors to TikTok.
Instagram has reduced its in-app purchasing initiatives over the past few years, but on Friday Meta introduced a new feature that appears to be lifted directly from TikTok StoreTikTok’s successful e-commerce platform. In a promotional videotwo shopping creators working for Meta explained how influencers can now “more prominently display” the products they sell in Reels. Instead of putting an Amazon or Walmart link in the comments, they can add a banner directing viewers to click the item at the bottom of their videos, just like it works on TikTok Shop.
Some of Meta’s other efforts were just as sharp. Just before TikTok stopped working For about 14 hours on Saturday, some people reported that among the last things they saw on the platform were sponsored posts for Instagram. “Unsurprisingly, as TikTok goes down tonight, Meta is flooding my FYP with Instagram ads,” one person said in a Bluesky post, referring to TikTok’s AI-powered For You Page feed. “In my last hour on TikTok, I saw ads for Instagram,” another person said on Threads.
TikTok’s Ad Library, a transparency tool that allows anyone to research which paid campaigns are running on the platform, shows that Meta has been running dozens 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, primarily in Europe, and does not cover ads that TikTok users may have seen in the United States. Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Facebook, a number of people reported seeing a different promotion pop up on their News Feed last week, encouraging them to link their TikTok accounts to their Facebook pages. “Grow your social presence across all apps by displaying your TikTok profile link and follower count on your Facebook page,” one version of the post reads.
Given the timing, “this seems a bit 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 was launched last month and allows users to view their YouTube, TikTok and Instagram handles as well as their Facebook follower counts. However, the banner people reported seeing in recent days only mentioned TikTok by name. This feature makes it easier for creators’ followers on other platforms to find and follow them on Facebook.