Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized Wednesday that his social media company faces stiff competition from TikTok, as Meta seeks to fend off accusations from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it has a monopoly over social networking.

Zuckerberg, who has spent three days on the stand, said he considers TikTok the “highest competitive threat” for Facebook and Instagram in the past few years.

Meta’s lead attorney, Mark Hansen, pointed to a 2020 email from former Facebook executive Vijaye Raji, who described TikTok’s growth as “worrying” and lamented that the company's strategy was “unfortunately not working fast enough.”

“While Reels V2 is aggressive and promising, we still have some concerns if it is sufficient to neutralize the threat,” Raji wrote of an early version of Meta’s short-form video format meant to compete with TikTok.

“TikTok in the US is a much bigger threat to our entire family of apps. And we need to put up a........

© The Hill