Reuters
- Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, spoke out on Friday about the Trump administration’s partial ban on TikTok.
- “I’ve said this before, but a US TikTok ban would be quite bad for Instagram, Facebook, and the internet more broadly,” Mosseri tweeted.
- While the ban may have a short-term benefit for Instagram — particularly after the introduction of its TikTok competitor, Reels, last month — the long-term costs outweigh those gains.
- Following Mosseri’s tweets, acting TikTok chief Vanessa Pappas urged Instagram to support TikTok in fighting the ban.
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Instagram boss Adam Mosseri has slammed the Trump administration’s partial TikTok ban, saying it’s harmful to the internet in general.
“I’ve said this before, but a US TikTok ban would be quite bad for Instagram, Facebook, and the internet more broadly,” Mosseri tweeted on Friday.
He noted that most of Instagram’s users are based outside of the US, which is also the company’s biggest potential growth area. The long term cost of “countries making aggressive demands and banning us over the next decade outweigh slowing down one competitor today.”
Mosseri’s comments came after the US Commerce Department on Friday issued a ban on new downloads and app updates for TikTok and WeChat over national security concerns, which for TikTok, could become an outright ban by November 12. TikTok is currently in talks to sell to software giant Oracle and several other US investors, which would seemingly resolve those concerns and lift the regulations.
TikTok told Business Insider in a statement that it would challenge the order, which it says “threatens to deprive the American people and small businesses across the US of a significant platform for both a voice and livelihoods.”
Following Mosseri's tweets, acting TikTok chief Vanessa Pappas urged Instagram to support TikTok in fighting the ban.
—Vanessa Pappas (@v_ness) September 18, 2020
Mosseri's comments on TikTok mirror his earlier statements on a possible ban, saying it sets a dangerous precedent that would be bad for Instagram in the long term.
"If we move to a place where countries start to silo internet within them, and we can't operate in that way, I think that it's much more problematic than any short-term benefit," Mosseri said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" earlier this month. "I'm actually not enjoying this at all, although some people think it's going to be very good for us."
Instagram and TikTok are direct competitors, particularly after Instagram's introduction of Reels, a short-form video feature Instagram added last month.