Meta has banned ads from TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance across the US and several other countries as the rivalry between the major social media operators heats up, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. The ban, which went into effect on Thursday, restricts ads and paid marketing messages from ByteDance, along with third-party ads that link to TikTok.
“We don’t have to run ads from a competitor whose goal is to pull people off our apps,” Meta spokesperson Christopher Sgro said in a statement to The Verge. “Declining promotional services to a competitor is a normal business practice across industries. We will continue to compete on product quality and user experience.”
Though TikTok in the US is now controlled by a joint venture majority-owned by US-based companies, ByteDance remains a major shareholder. In addition to pulling TikTok ads in the US, the policy will also restrict them in Canada, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam.