Facebook tells employees to tweak algorithms to take on TikTok

San Francisco: Facebook (now Meta) employees have reportedly been directed by the senior executives to change the platform’s algorithms to make it more like its arch Chinese rival TikTok that is gaining immense popularity among the teenagers.
In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, Tom Alison who’s Meta executive in charge of Facebook detailed the brief.
“Rather than prioritise posts from accounts people follow, Facebook’s main feed will, like TikTok, start heavily recommending posts regardless of where they come from,” according to the internal memo.
The other directive to employees is that years after Messenger and Facebook split up as separate apps, the two will be brought back together, mimicking TikTok’s messaging functionality.
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“Executives were closely tracking TikTok’s moves and had grown worried that they weren’t doing enough to compete. In conversations with CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year, they decided that Facebook needed to rethink the feed entirely,” according to the report.