TikTok, YouTube and other digital platforms don’t offer personal social networking services akin to those of Facebook and Instagram, according to trial testimony from TikTok’s head of operations and corporate disclosures to competition regulators in Australia and the European Union. The testimony was introduced into evidence today as part of US Federal Trade Commission antitrust litigation seeking to break up Meta Platforms.
TikTok, YouTube and other digital platforms don’t offer personal social networking services akin to those of Facebook and Instagram, according to trial testimony from TikTok’s head of operations and corporate disclosures to competition regulators in Australia and the European Union. The testimony was introduced into evidence today as part of US Federal Trade Commission antitrust litigation seeking to break up Meta Platforms.Facebook and Instagram offer “personal social networking services” worldwide and in the US today, while TikTok and YouTube do not, TikTok’s head of operations and trust and safety, Adam Presser, testified today.
Whether the FTC will be able to establish the existence of a relevant antitrust market for these services is among the “hard questions” that will determine whether its antitrust claims “can hold up in the crucible of trial,” US District Judge James Boasberg wrote in a summary judgement opinion allowing the case to move forward in the District of Columbia (see here).
On the 11th day of trial, Presser discussed TikTok’s 2020 responses to requests for information from the European Commission related to multiple investigations of Facebook’s conduct in the bloc.
“In our view, Facebook does not offer services/apps/websites in the [European Economic Area] region which directly compete with TikTok or TikTok.com,” the company wrote. “This is because our services available to EEA users do not qualify as ‘social networking services'.”
Facebook and Instagram’s services are an additive “complement” to TikTok’s services, which “are not intended for networking purposes,” the company wrote.
Presser’s early testimony today rubbed up against internal TikTok documents presented during Meta’s cross examination calling YouTube and Instagram TiktTok’s “most important competitors.”
TikTok's European Commission submissions also predated the introduction of Meta's Reels short-form video feeds on Instagram and Facebook, according to Meta attorney Aaron Panner. He also suggested that TikTok may have determined it would be disadvantageous, “for regulatory purposes,” to be classified as a social network.
TikTok’s 2022 response to an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report on social media services highlighted a key distinction between Meta’s apps and TikTok that Presser repeatedly returned to during his testimony.
“It is worth noting that, unlike, say, a user’s network on Facebook, in many cases, a user will have no real-world connection to many of the accounts that they follow and TikTok has historically been less reliant on the so-called ‘social graph’ associated with pure social networking,” the company wrote to the ACCC.
Presser acknowledged during cross-examination that he wasn't at the company at the time of the regulatory submissions and did not know the “regulatory strategy” informing lawyers from TikTok parent ByteDance who responded to the EC and ACCC’s questionnaires.
— Defining social networks —
In a 2020 response to questions from the European Commission, TikTok defined social networking services as “online platforms which people use to build and maintain social networks or social relationships with friends and professional acquaintances.”
The “main websites/apps” that can be described as a social networking service, according to TikTok’s responses, include Facebook, Instagram, WeChat, QZone and LinkedIn.
TikTok also posited differences between social networking services, contrasting the “professional” focus of LinkedIn’s social network with the “private and entertainment” purpose behind Facebook.
The “predominant form of user interaction” on TikTok is not “network-driven,” the company told the European Commission.
TikTok has attempted to build its own “social graph,” which maps relationships among people, “but we haven’t been particularly successful,” Presser testified.
A “core differentiation” between TikTok and Facebook and Instagram, Presser said, is that Meta’s content delivery feeds are built on top of a user’s foundational network of contacts and people they know.
TikTok, on the other hand, is built around a content/interest-based graph, which represents a “portfolio of interests” constructed around individual “behavioral and interest signals” gathered by the app, according to Presser.
Eli Tucker, who previously served as chief technical officer for Tumblr, also testified briefly today.
Tucker testified about his belief in different types of social graphs, describing Tumblr as an "interest-based platform" with the core use case of providing an "interest-based social network and blogging platform."
During cross examination, Tucker recounted how he came to Tumblr after the company was purchased by Yahoo! for $1 billion in 2013.
When WordPress owner Automattic bought Tumblr from Verizon in 2019, however, the platform's price was closer to "a modest home in Silicon Valley," Tucker quipped.
Tucker testified during cross examination that Tumblr competes with social media companies like Facebook and Instagram for users' time and attention.
He wasn't so sure the platform competed with Meta's apps for advertising dollars that fund Tumblr's operations, however.
One "safe assumption," he told FTC attorney Peter Taylor, was that most Tumblr users would prefer not to see advertisements at all.
— Similar, but different —
FTC attorney Daniel Matheson presented Presser with a visual comparing the similar appearance of a Michael Jackson music video for the song “Thriller” in user feeds of short-form video content on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
A similar graphic has already popped up during a Meta technology tutorial for Boasberg (see here) and the testimony of an FTC expert who argued TikTok and Apple’s iMessage are not social networks (see here).
Matheson asked Presser today how he could claim a “core differentiation” between TikTok and the other products, “given the similarity in appearance?”
Presser offered two points in response.
Despite similarities in design and broad functionality, he said, the context mix on each platform once users start swiping through their feeds could “feel different” based on different content recommendation principles powering those feeds.
The second difference could be observed once a user clicked out of the platform views highlighted in the visual, Presser said.
Clicking out of the displayed views on YouTube and Instagram takes a user back to each platform’s “core business” — in YouTube’s case, a search/discovery landing page, according to Presser. In Instagram’s case, a feed of content from friends and other followed accounts would pop up.
While those other platforms offer “lots of experiences,” TikTok’s short-from video content stream is “the primary entry point into the product,” Presser testified.
— Cross-examination —
During his cross examination, Presser repeatedly avoided agreeing with questions posed by Meta attorney Aaron Panner framing Instagram, Facebook and YouTube as TikTok’s most important competitors.
Panner later presented Presser with multiple, highly redacted internal presentations to TikTok senior management and analyses of the competitive landscape from 2021 and 2022.
“YouTube and Instagram are TikTok’s most important competitors,” read one section of a document under a sub-heading titled, “What’s our overall judgement?”
A separate, internal analysis of Meta’s business drivers conducted by TikTok in 2022 determined that the company was “strategically shifting to short-form video content and prioritizing the short-form video product Reels to drive long-term revenue.”
“While video has been a priority for the company since 2016, Meta heightened their focus in 2021 to recapture younger audiences, mitigate competitor growth (TikTok) and ensure growth of time spent on FB/IG content,” the document said.
Panner also asked about differences between TikTok and Meta’s “discovery engine,” which is a core feature behind content recommendations and user engagement.
Presser acknowledged that Meta was trying to “replicate” TikTok’s video-sharing capabilities after being presented with his company’s hypothesis that the goal of Meta’s effort was to revive the “declining FB core app.”
One potential reason Meta sought to boost video engagement in 2021 was because that year saw the company’s first reported quarter-over-quarter sequential decline in worldwide daily active users.
“The user base of the core Facebook blue app is aging and younger generations are not embracing Facebook like previous generations, instead preferring competitors like TikTok or Snap,” according to the global summary of “Project Blue,” TikTok’s codename for its internal analysis of Meta’s business.
Presser, who joined TikTok just under three years ago, was also questioned about court filings from the company during high-profile litigation challenging federal legislation requiring the divestiture from Chinese ownership due to concerns about potential user data collection and foreign influence operations (see here).
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order extending the TikTok ban deadline by another 75 days as the video-sharing platform’s parent company, ByteDance, seeks a non-Chinese buyer (see here).
Among the “significant and irreversible harms to our business and our brand” that TikTok alleged in its court challenge to the ban was that users would turn toward competing platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat.
TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube are all competing for content creators, and those creators are “ultimately powering the content ecosystem” on TikTok, Presser testified.
During his examination by the FTC, Matheson asked Presser about a June 2024 sworn declaration filed in the case.
“Although there are other platforms that allow users to post and share content, TikTok differs from these platforms in important respects,” one passage said. Tiktok is “not as focused on users’ interactions with existing friends, family, or co-workers, like some other platforms are.”
Asked by Matheson which “other platforms” Presser had in mind, he responded by calling out Facebook and Instagram.
During Meta’s cross examination, Panner asked Presser about TikTok’s submission to the ACCC.
“We have, nevertheless, seen that it is possible for new entrants to establish themselves relatively quickly and to effectively compete based on the quality and innovation of their product and service offerings, as the recent growth of TikTok has shown,” the company wrote under a section about overcoming barriers to entry.
In response to Meta’s questions about the ability of newcomers to break into the market, Presser said TikTok’s experience showed that while it was possible to become established and compete effectively with social media and entertainment platforms, “it’s not necessarily common or easy.”
Meta also questioned Presser about a TikTok submission to the Australian government that did not come up during his direct examination.
“Less than 24 months after TikTok’s US launch disrupted the social media landscape, dominant players Meta and Google launched short-form video platforms,” TikTok wrote in a March 2025 submission to the Australian government, which Panner described as related to consideration of a potential age restriction exemption for the company.
“Today, TikTok, Reels and Shorts are virtually – and deliberately – indistinguishable in function and user experience,” TikTok wrote.
The FTC objected during an exchange where Presser appeared uncertain about the meaning of a passage that Meta homed in on in TikTok’s submission. “It would be difficult to conceive of an objective ‘predominant purpose’ test that could be equally applied to TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube and yield different results,” TikTok wrote.
Following the FTC’s objection, Boasberg said that the document “seems to speak for itself” and that Presser’s testimony “hasn’t added anything.”
Meta research executive Curtiss Cobb is scheduled to testify later today.
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