META BANS BYTEDANCE ADS ACROSS US AND SEVERAL OTHER COUNTRIES

Meta has banned advertisements from ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, across its platforms in the United States and several other countries, Bloomberg reported. The ban took effect on Thursday and covers ads and paid marketing messages from ByteDance, as well as third-party advertisements that link to TikTok. One report said the ban applies in the US, Canada, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam. Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro said in a statement that "we don't have to run ads from a competitor whose goal is to pull people off our apps," adding that "declining promotional services to a competitor is a normal business practice across industries." TikTok had previously stopped allowing users to include links that open or log users into other social media apps, according to its support page.

The move follows a child safety settlement Meta reached with US states, with one report putting the figure at $17 billion and another at $18 billion. The settlement requires Meta to add new child safety restrictions on Facebook and Instagram. Meta has since pressed TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar safeguards, including through an advertising campaign that TikTok reportedly declined to carry on its own platform. One report said Meta placed adverts in major newspapers calling on its rivals to follow its lead, and said Meta accused TikTok of failing to attend several US government meetings on screen time and child safety. Separately, European regulators said this summer that TikTok had not done enough to protect minors and could face a fine of up to six percent of its annual revenue, according to one report.

TikTok in the US is now run by a joint venture, with one report describing it as majority-owned by US-based companies and another describing its owners as a consortium of US and UAE investors including Larry Ellison's Oracle; both reports agree ByteDance retains a stake. TikTok has said little publicly in response to the advertising ban, according to one report. Meta said it intends to continue competing with rivals on product quality and user experience. Neither TikTok nor ByteDance was reported to have issued a detailed response to the ban at the time of reporting.