It was too good an opportunity for Meta to ignore: On January 19, TikTok, one of its biggest social media rivals, would go dark across the US when a new national security law went into effect. In the days and weeks before the ban, as millions of Americans struggled to find a suitable alternative to TikTok, Meta found ways to promote Instagram and Facebook as a response. The tech giant made a number of design tweaks, rolled out new features, and ran ads that positioned all of its platforms—especially its video product, Reels—as direct competitors to TikTok.
Instagram has scaled back its in-app purchases in recent years, but on Friday, Meta showed off a new feature that appears to have been lifted directly from TikTok Shop, TikTok’s most successful ecommerce platform. In a promotional video, two store creators working for Meta explained that promoters can now “prominently feature” the products they promote on Reels. Instead of putting an Amazon or Walmart link in the comments, they can add a banner that directs viewers to click on something below their videos—just like how it works on TikTok Shop.
Some of Meta’s other efforts were as shown. Before TikTok went offline for about 14 hours on Saturday, some people reported that among the last things they saw on the platform were sponsored Instagram posts. “No wonder, since TikTok went down tonight, Meta is flooding my FYP with Instagram ads,” one person said in a Bluesky post, referring to the feed of TikTok’s AI-powered For You page. “In my last hour of TikTok I saw instagram ads,” said one person on Threads.
TikTok’s Ad Library, a transparency tool that allows anyone to search which paid campaigns are running on the platform, shows that Meta played a number of sponsored videos about Instagram and Reels in January that were viewed collectively by millions of users. But the tool includes data from only a select number of countries—mostly Europe—and doesn’t include what ads TikTok users in the United States might be seeing. Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Facebook, many people have reported seeing different promotions appear in their news feeds for the past week, prompting them to link their TikTok accounts to their Facebook pages. “Build your social presence across all apps by showing your TikTok profile link and follower count on your Facebook page,” one version of the message read.
Given the timing, “this sounds aggressive,” one user wrote on X and a screenshot of the banner. “Facebook is harassing users by suggesting we add our TikTok accounts to our Facebook pages,” another person joked.
The information appears to be linked to the Meta feature introduced last month that allows users to display their YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram handles and follower counts on Facebook. However, the banner people reported seeing in recent days only mentioned TikTok by name. This feature makes it easy for fans of creators on other platforms to find and follow them on Facebook.