Eleven years ago, Facebook was caught red-handed after it hired a prominent public relations firm to try to plant stories harshly criticizing Google’s privacy practices in leading news outlets.
In 2018, it hired the PR firm Definers to do opposition research on the company’s critics, including billionaire philanthropist George Soros. The company's longtime head of communications, Elliot Schrage, took the blame for approving the hiring of Definers and similar firms and left Facebook.
On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that Meta, Facebook's parent company, is using similar tactics to go after another rival TikTok. Meta, the Post reported, hired a Republican consulting firm called Targeted Victory to “orchestrate a nationwide campaign” against TikTok.
Targeted Victory, according to the Post, contracted with dozens of public relations firms across the U.S. to help “sway public opinion against TikTok” by planting local news stories and helping place op-eds targeting TikTok around the country, the story says.
Meta confirmed that it has hired Targeted Victory.
“We believe all platforms, including TikTok, should face a level of scrutiny consistent with their growing success," spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement.
Zac Moffatt, the CEO of Targeted Victory, said the company “manages bipartisan teams on behalf of our clients.”
“It is public knowledge we have worked with Meta for several years and we are proud of the work we have done,” he said in a statement.
The Post obtained internal emails from Targeted Victory that outlined a campaign to undermine TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The firm used a mix of “genuine concerns and unfounded anxieties” about TikTok in order to try to turn public and political sentiment against it.
According to the report, Targeted Victory was also working to get “proactive coverage” about Facebook into local media, including “submitting letters and opinion pieces speaking glowingly of Facebook’s role in, for instance, supporting Black-owned businesses.”
“We are deeply concerned that the stoking of local media reports on alleged trends that have not been found on the platform could cause real world harm,” TikTok said in an emailed statement.
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
