WaPo’s Taylor Lorenz: Facebook’s Campaign Against TikTok Used ‘Dog Whistle’ and ‘QAnon’ Messaging

‘I was just surprised at how aggressive it was’

EXCERPT:

LORENZ: “Yeah. I was just surprised at how aggressive it was. They really hit TikTok on all fronts. And also, just the dog whistle nature of it. The two main attacks that I found throughout this whole campaign are TikTok is dangerous and bad for kids, and then stoking anti-China sentiment. These are both messages that really resonate, especially with the conservative base. I lot of it honestly sounded sort of, almost QAnon-like, they way, it’s like, save the children, we have to protect the children. Meanwhile, a lot of these rumors about all of this started actually on Facebook. But yeah, I was just kind of struck by those messages.”

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