Facebook is in trouble. Its escape plan: Turn into TikTok | The Star

Aging tech products often suffer from what’s known as feature creep: excessive complexity caused by the accretion of bells and whistles over the years. Log into Facebook (launched in 2004) or Instagram (launched in 2010) these days and every available pixel seems to offer up a different feature, function, tool or interface, many of them cloned from newer, buzzier competitors. This everything-to-everyone approach might leave one with the impression that Meta Platforms — the recently rebranded umbrella company that oversees Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — lacks a clear vision for its flagship apps. But on an earnings call with investors Wednesday afternoon, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg outlined a straightforward mission statement for Facebook and Instagram: They’re both TikTok now. Not that he said so outright. But the trajectory he mapped out for both apps, toward an experience dominated by algorithm-suggested video content, is one that will bring them more in line with the ByteDance-owned video app that has rapidly become their fiercest competitor — even if their users would explicitly prefer otherwise. TikTok nipping at its heels isn’t the only reason the company reported its first-ever year-over-year quarterly revenue decline in the earnings report accompanying Zuckerberg’s call. An Apple privacy…
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