Biden’s Reelection Campaign Joins TikTok in Push for Young Voters 

The icon for the video sharing TikTok app is seen on a smartphone, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. (AP)
The icon for the video sharing TikTok app is seen on a smartphone, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. (AP)
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Biden’s Reelection Campaign Joins TikTok in Push for Young Voters 

The icon for the video sharing TikTok app is seen on a smartphone, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. (AP)
The icon for the video sharing TikTok app is seen on a smartphone, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. (AP)

US President Joe Biden's reelection campaign joined short-form video app TikTok on Sunday, using the NFL's Super Bowl to kick off its new account to reach young voters ahead of the presidential election in November.

The campaign's launch on TikTok is notable given that the app, which is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, is under review in the US for potential national security concerns. Some US lawmakers have long called for the app to be banned over concerns that the Chinese government could access user data or influence what people see on the app.

Last year, the Biden administration ordered government agencies to remove TikTok from federal government-owned phones and devices.

TikTok has maintained that it would not share US user data with the Chinese government and has taken substantial measures to protect the privacy of its users.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

Biden campaign advisors said in a statement it would "continue meeting voters where they are," including on other social media apps like Meta Platform's Instagram and Truth Social, which is owned by former US President Donald Trump.

The campaign is taking "advanced safety precautions" for its devices and its presence on TikTok was separate from the app's ongoing security review, a campaign official added.

Trump, the Republican frontrunner in the presidential race, does not have an official account on TikTok.

The video posted by the Biden-Harris HQ TikTok account made light of a fringe conservative conspiracy theory that the Super Bowl was rigged in favor of the Chiefs, in order for pop superstar Taylor Swift, who is dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, to announce an endorsement of Biden.

Amid rapid-fire questions asking the president to choose from one of two options, Biden was asked if he was "deviously plotting to rig the season so the Chiefs would win the Super Bowl" or whether the Chiefs were simply just a good football team.

"I'd get in trouble if I told you," Biden joked.

By Sunday night, the account had gained 10,900 followers.



Meta Faces Historic Antitrust Trial That Could Force It to Break off Instagram, WhatsApp 

The Meta logo is seen at the Vivatech show in Paris, France, June 14, 2023. (AP)
The Meta logo is seen at the Vivatech show in Paris, France, June 14, 2023. (AP)
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Meta Faces Historic Antitrust Trial That Could Force It to Break off Instagram, WhatsApp 

The Meta logo is seen at the Vivatech show in Paris, France, June 14, 2023. (AP)
The Meta logo is seen at the Vivatech show in Paris, France, June 14, 2023. (AP)

Meta Platforms Inc. faces a historic antitrust trial beginning Monday that could force the tech giant to break off Instagram and WhatsApp, startups it bought more than a decade ago that have since grown into social media powerhouses.

The looming antitrust trial will be the first big test of President Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission’s ability to challenge Big Tech. The lawsuit was filed against Meta — then called Facebook — in 2020, during Trump's first term. It claims the company bought Instagram and WhatsApp to squash competition and establish an illegal monopoly in the social media market.

Meta, the FTC argues, has maintained a monopoly by pursuing CEO Mark Zuckerberg's strategy, "expressed in 2008: ‘It is better to buy than compete.’ True to that maxim, Facebook has systematically tracked potential rivals and acquired companies that it viewed as serious competitive threats."

Facebook also enacted policies designed to make it difficult for smaller rivals to enter the market and "neutralize perceived competitive threats," the FTC says in its complaint, just as the world shifted its attention to mobile devices from desktop computers.

"Unable to maintain its monopoly by fairly competing, the company’s executives addressed the existential threat by buying up new innovators that were succeeding where Facebook failed," the FTC says.

Facebook bought Instagram — then a scrappy photo-sharing app with no ads and a small cult following — in 2012. The $1 billion cash and stock purchase price was eye-popping at the time, though the deal's value fell to $750 million after Facebook's stock price dipped following its initial public offering in May 2012.

Instagram was the first company Facebook bought and kept running as a separate app. Up until then, Facebook was known for smaller "acqui-hires" — a type of popular Silicon Valley deal in which a company purchases a startup as a way to hire its talented workers, then shuts the acquired company down. Two years later, it did it again with the messaging app WhatsApp, which it purchased for $22 billion.

WhatsApp and Instagram helped Facebook move its business from desktop computers to mobile devices, and to remain popular with younger generations as rivals like Snapchat (which it also tried, but failed, to buy) and TikTok emerged. However, the FTC has a narrow definition of Meta's competitive market, excluding companies like TikTok, YouTube and Apple's messaging service from being considered rivals to Instagram and WhatsApp.

"The FTC already has the difficult task, whether it’s looking at 10 years ago or five years ago or today, of trying to define what is the market we’re talking about in a sufficiently narrow way that it can show Meta has a ton of power in that market," said Paul Swanson, an antitrust attorney for the law firm Holland & Hart. "And I do think that challenge has gotten harder as the years have gone by and we see more and more potential competitors in social media spaces."

Meta, meanwhile, says the FTC’s lawsuit "defies reality."

"The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others. More than 10 years after the FTC reviewed and cleared our acquisitions, the Commission’s action in this case sends the message that no deal is ever truly final. Regulators should be supporting American innovation, rather than seeking to break up a great American company and further advantaging China on critical issues like AI," the company said in a statement.

In a filing last week, Meta also stressed that the FTC "must prove that Meta has monopoly power in its claimed relevant market now, not at some time in the past." This, experts say, could also prove challenging since more competitors have emerged in the social media space in the years since the company bought WhatsApp and Instagram.

Meta's fate will be decided by US District Judge James Boasberg, who late last year denied Meta's request for a summary judgment and ruled that the case must go to trial.

Boasberg "seems to be skeptical" of the FTC's narrow market definition in his rulings to date, Swanson said. He added that the judge also said it is a "fact question," which means he is open to hearing what the FTC and its experts have to say to define that narrow market.

While the FTC may face an uphill battle in proving its case, the stakes are high for Meta, whose advertising business could be cut in half if it's forced to spin off Instagram.

"Instagram is now Meta’s biggest money maker in the US, its most lucrative market, where the app accounts for 50.5% of the company’s ad revenues in 2025. Instagram has also been picking up the slack for Facebook on the user front, particularly among young people, for a long time," said Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg.

"The trial also comes as Meta is trying to bring back OG Facebook in an effort to appeal to Gen Z and younger users as they join social media. Social media usage is far more fragmented today than it was in 2012 when Facebook acquired Instagram, and Facebook isn’t where the cool college kids hang out anymore. Meta needs Instagram to continue growing, especially as more advertisers think Instagram-first with their Meta budgets," she added.

But Meta isn't the only technology company in the sights of federal antitrust regulators, Google and Amazon face their own cases. The remedy phase of Google's case is scheduled to begin on April 21. A federal judge declared the search giant an illegal monopoly last August.

"A big theme here is we are applying 19th-century laws to 21st-century markets. And I think it’s an open question whether the judgment developments to antitrust law can keep up with markets as they are changing — these fluid and dynamic tech markets in particular," Swanson said. "And this will be a case that speaks directly to that."