SOCIAL
New Reports Show that Meta is Working with political Activists to Seed Concerns About TikTok

If you had any doubts about the level of threat that TikTok poses to Facebook, this might help to solidify your thinking.
Today, in news that’s both surprising and not at the same time, The Washington Post has reported that Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta hired political campaigning group Targeted Victory to run a smear campaign designed to sway public opinion against the increasingly popular short-form video app.
As per the report:
“Targeted Victory [was hired to] “get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat, especially as a foreign-owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using.”
Meta’s been working with Targeted Victory to seed questions about TikTok, largely via local news outlets across the US. Those efforts have seemingly included inventing harmful trends via challenges and memes, in order to amplify backlash against the app.
“In October, Targeted Victory worked to spread rumors of the ‘Slap a Teacher TikTok Challenge’ in local news, touting a local news report on the alleged challenge in Hawaii. In reality, no such challenge existed on TikTok.”
As you may recall, TikTok was actually forced to take stronger action against harmful challenges late last year, after reports of injuries and harm sustained by users taking part in the same.
Now, you have to wonder whether those reports were even real, and what influence TikTok actually had on such.
The revelations that Meta is looking to smear TikTok are significant – and it’s worth noting that Meta hasn’t denied the Post’s claims. But they’re also fairly in line with what we know of Meta’s past actions to influence backlash against the short-form video app.
In late 2019, for example, as per another report from WSJ, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg held various meetings with US politicians, in which he sought to emphasize concerns about TikTok’s links to the Chinese Government. Zuckerberg met with several senators, in which he pointed out TikTok’s obligations and connections, while Zuckerberg also made the same case to then US President Donald Trump during a private dinner, reiterating the threat that Chinese internet companies pose to American businesses.
Zuckerberg’s various meetings were held in October 2019, and a month later, the US Government announced a national security investigation into TikTok, which eventually resulted in the failed attempt by the Trump Administration to force TikTok into US ownership.
Given that we know that Meta has sought to emphasize such concerns before, and that Meta has worked with Targeted Victory in the past as well, it’s no real surprise to find that it’s looking to stoke concerns about TikTok in this way again.
But still, it is a concern. Should a private company be acting like a political entity, in seeking to use influence operations to stifle a potential competitor – especially a company with the capacity to influence on the scale that Meta can via its apps?
No doubt this will form another element of the ongoing antitrust cases against Meta, which are specifically focused on its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp – though the additional evidence of how it seeks to crush its competition will still be permissible in evidence.
But are we surprised, really? Meta has a history of seeking to kill off competitors, either by acquisition or by market force.
As Snap CEO Evan Spiegel recalled of his meeting with Zuckerberg in 2013, in which he rejected Meta’s $3 billion takeover offer for his rising app:
“Zuckerberg flew to Spiegel’s hometown, Los Angeles, arranging for a private apartment to host the secret sit-down. When Spiegel showed up with his cofounder Bobby Murphy, who serves as Snapchat’s chief technology officer, Zuckerberg had a specific agenda ready. He tried to draw out the partners’ vision for Snapchat – and he described Facebook’s new product, Poke, a mobile app for sharing photos and making them disappear. It would debut in a matter of days. And in case there was any nuance missed, Zuckerberg would soon change the large sign outside its Silicon Valley campus from its iconic thumbs-up “like” symbol to the Poke icon. Remembers Spiegel: “It was basically like, ‘We’re going to crush you.’”
This is part of Zuckerberg’s DNA, which inherently makes it a part of Meta’s make-up. Meta will seek to win out, in any way it can, and if that means quashing a rival through targeted PR, so be it.
But what can be done about it? It’s not illegal for Meta to campaign in this way – and as noted, Meta’s response to this latest story was to basically dismiss concerns, saying that TikTok should be willing to face a level of scrutiny in line with its success.
Again, this is an element for the various antitrust investigations to consider. But a surprise? Hardly
SOCIAL
LinkedIn Adds AI-Generated Job Candidate Responses in Recruiter

LinkedIn continues to integrate generative AI elements, this time within its Recruiter platform, with AI-created messages that HR professionals can then send to potential candidates, which are customized and personalized based on InMail best practices.
As you can see in this example, the new process, built into LinkedIn Recruiter, will enable users to quickly and easily craft a message that they can then send to a potential candidate, simply by tapping the ‘Draft personalized message’ prompt at the bottom of the composer window.

As explained by LinkedIn:
“Using our own LinkedIn in-house generative AI model trained on successful InMails, we use the information from the candidate’s profile, job description, and the recruiter’s company to draft a highly personalized message to get the conversation started.”
Once the AI generated InMail is created, you’ll then be able to further customize the message by ticking the topic elements that you do or don’t want to include. You can then edit and send the message – which should help recruiters save time, while still maintaining personal outreach.
Though it also feels a little impersonal, like maybe this is an element that shouldn’t be automated?
I guess, when you’re dealing with such responses at scale, it’s not really personalized anyway. But as with some of LinkedIn’s other generative AI experiments, like AI created feed posts, it feels like this is taking some of the human interaction out of the platform, and removing the ‘social’ aspects out of ‘social media’.
Maybe that’s an idealistic viewpoint, and the time savings outweigh any overarching principles at play. But it seems like some of these things should be written by a human, in order to maintain that baseline of real connection within these apps – otherwise we’re headed to a future where it’s just bots talking to bots, and when you actually have to meet in person, you’ll never know what you’re going to get.
I mean, theoretically, the candidates could also have written their application via generative AI, and they could respond to these emails with their own generative replies. And if it’s a remote position, maybe you’ll never even meet in person, and it’ll all be just simulated engagement for simulated jobs.
Seems slightly off, but maybe these tools help in some cases, potentially a lot of cases – it just feels like LinkedIn is going to get a lot less genuine than it already is as a result.
Either way, it’s happening. LinkedIn says that it’s starting to roll out AI-assisted messages in Recruiter to ‘a handful of customers’ in the US and Europe, before an expanded launch beginning next month.
You can read more about LinkedIn’s latest Recruiter updates here.
SOCIAL
YouTube Ad Revenue Forecast To Rise 4%, Hit $30.4B, In 2023 05/30/2023

Advertising revenue across all
YouTube platforms, including YouTube TV, should see growth of 4% this year, to $30.4 billion and growth of 10.3% to $33.5 billion, in 2024, according to new WARC projections.
While relatively
modest, 2023’s growth will represent a turnaround from Q4 2022, when YouTube’s ad revenue dropped …
SOCIAL
LinkedIn Launches New ‘Find Your In’ Ad Campaign

LinkedIn’s launching a new promotional campaign, created by ad agency Droga5, which aims to highlight how you can use the platform to find your ideal career pathway.
The ‘Find Your In’ campaign looks to showcase how LinkedIn can unlock new possibilities, so you can be whatever you imagine, with the help of LinkedIn’s connectivity.
As explained by Droga5:
“It starts with a little girl who finds herself in a place that’s perfectly ordinary: the laundromat. But we quickly learn there’s more here than meets the eye. All it takes is a little bit of inspiration from a LinkedIn alert on a nearby phone to set off an unexpected and extravagant dance with her own potential. The future comes to life, teeming with opportunity and endless options to explore.”
Not sure that I felt inspired, as such, by the clip, but it is catchy, and it could prompt people to take another look at the app, and consider how they can utilize LinkedIn as a guide on their professional journey.
LinkedIn’s been working to maximize discovery, and capitalize on its record high levels of engagement, by better highlighting relevant influencers and niche creators, with a view to helping others discover new connections, and explore their passions in the app.
That, ideally, will help more people establish networks of likeminded professionals, which could indeed facilitate new career opportunities through the same.
The campaign could help to amplify this. The new push will run across TV, web and social media platforms over the coming months.
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