Meta's Push on Rivals May Be PR Genius, If It Doesn't Overplay Its Hand

Meta is pursuing a direct campaign to get rivals TikTok and YouTube to sign onto new restrictive platform protocols that it’s being forced to adopt as part of a landmark settlement with U.S. states over teen safety on social media. Leading PR and crisis comms experts think that, as a crisis management tactic, it's smart, but potentially risky if mishandled. Last week, the Facebook and Instagram parent agreed to pay roughly $18 billion and make policy changes over allegations from state attorneys general that its products were addictive and harmful to teens. Now, the company will implement a strict two-hour time limit for minors on Facebook and Instagram, limit access at night and during school hours, hide like counts, and bar certain beauty filters on its apps. Hours after the settlement broke, Meta ran open letter-style ads on its platforms urging TikTok and YouTube to "join us in supporting teens.” It wrote: “These protections will only be truly effective if we work with our peers—TikTok and YouTube—to put the same measures in place.” Full-page print ads soon followed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and other newspapers. The newspaper ads are “a sign that their intended audience is much larger and broader” than the decision-makers at competing social platforms, said Evan Nierman, CEO of crisis PR firm Red Banyan. Meta is really targeting consumers, parents, and lawmakers, Nierman said, and those audiences "are now looking to see how the other companies respond." The news coverage the ads generate, Nierman added, means "they're effectively paying for themselves." Meta declined to comment on the record, but pointed ADWEEK to Pew Research Center findings indicating that teens use Meta's competitors' platforms at higher rates. According to the data, 63% use Instagram and 31% use Facebook, versus 92% who use YouTube and 68% who use TikTok. Neither TikTok nor Google responded with comment by press time. Meta has weathered plenty of legal and reputational crises before, from the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal to Zuckerberg's repeated turns testifying before Congress on everything from data privacy to antitrust issues. https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/2092638560591720860?s=20 But the campaign isn’t purely reputational; the company said that it will withhold 30%, or roughly $5.3 billion, of the settlement payment until TikTok and YouTube install a one-hour daily limit for teens and match the same 30% figure. That ups the pressure on the companies and regulators to respond. Some state attorneys general are already calling on other social platforms to embrace the same restrictions that Meta is adopting. “YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, and other tech companies should immediately follow Meta’s lead and adopt these stringent protections for their young users,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a press release last week. While recasting the narrative isn’t a new PR principle, the attempt to flip the script onto competitors is unusual. “I have done open letters on behalf of clients, but never once did I try to take down my competitors in the process," said Gerard Braud, the founder and CEO of crisis comms software firm SituationHub. "This is the first time I’ve seen it, and I actually think it's a smart tactic for them to use.” “They aren't merely saying, ‘Look at all the reforms we're making.’ They're effectively saying, ‘These should now be the rules for everybody,” said Juda Engelmayer, a crisis comms expert and the CEO of HeraldPR. If TikTok and YouTube adopt the same protocols, "Meta's liability becomes an industry standard.” On a more practical level, the campaign could level the playing field, because Meta could hamstring the same part of its rivals’ businesses that the settlement will hamstring in its own: ad revenues. “They don't want their competitors to still be able to target that audience and benefit financially if they can’t,” Braud said. “There is almost a no-lose communications component to the strategy,” Engelmayer said. “If competitors follow, Meta can say it helped establish the standard. If they don't, Meta can portray itself as the company willing to do more for child safety.” But it's a fine line for Meta to balance. “Meta’s biggest risk here is overplaying its hand and acting as though a settlement suddenly made it the moral authority on child safety or a force for good on the issue,” said Nierman. “There’s a legitimate argument that kids deserve the same protections on every platform, and Meta can make that case forcefully while continuing to own the circumstances that got it here. But if Meta is seen as leveraging the child safety issue performatively to drag competitors into the same restrictions, as opposed to taking real responsibility and making things right, then credibility and goodwill will evaporate.”

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Meta's Push on Rivals May Be PR Genius, If It Doesn't Overplay Its Hand

The social giant has roped TikTok and YouTube into the conversation about protecting teens

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Kendra Barnett

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