Meta and TikTok are making it harder to move audiences between their apps

For years, a common growth playbook has been to build an audience on one short-video app and nudge it toward another. Several moves reported this week suggest the biggest platforms are making that harder, and are competing more directly for the same vertical-video viewer.

Meta shuts the door on TikTok ads

Meta has banned ads from ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese parent company, across the US and several other countries, according to The Verge, which credits earlier reporting by Bloomberg. The Verge reports that the ban took effect on Thursday. It covers ads and paid marketing messages from ByteDance, and also third-party ads that link to TikTok. Beyond the US, the policy applies in Canada, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam, the outlet says.

Meta spokesperson Christopher Sgro told The Verge the company does not have to carry ads from "a competitor whose goal is to pull people off our apps," calling the refusal a normal business practice.

The Verge notes that TikTok in the US is now controlled by a joint venture majority-owned by US-based companies, though ByteDance remains a major shareholder. It also places the ban in a wider context. Meta recently agreed to a $17 billion child safety settlement that included new restrictions for teens, and has since called on TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar safeguards, including through an ad campaign TikTok reportedly declined to run.

TikTok is limiting links out, too

The restrictions run both ways. The Verge reports that TikTok has stopped allowing users to include links that "open or log you into other social media apps," citing TikTok's support page.

Taken together, these changes may affect creators in a few practical ways:

• Paid promotion to TikTok: If the third-party rule is applied as described, a boosted Instagram or Facebook post that points viewers to a TikTok profile could be rejected in the affected countries. That may also apply to brands and agencies running Meta campaigns that send traffic to TikTok.
• Cross-linking from TikTok: Links that open or log users into other social apps appear to be off the table under TikTok's support-page wording. Creators who rely on those links to send TikTok viewers elsewhere may want to check their profiles against the current rules.
• Owned channels matter more: When both companies discourage traffic flowing to the other, assets you control, such as a website or newsletter, may become a more reliable bridge between audiences. The sources do not address how either policy treats those links, so it is worth confirming before relying on them.

Meta leans further into full-screen video

At the same time, Meta is testing ways to look more like TikTok. PetaPixel, summarizing reports from The Verge and TechCrunch, says Meta is trialing versions of Instagram and Facebook that open straight into full-screen vertical video.

On Instagram, a setting spotted by app researcher Radu Oncescu opens the app to Reels rather than the usual feed. Stories stay at the top, and swiping up reaches the feed of followed accounts. Meta spokesperson Devi Narasimhan told The Verge the test is running in a small number of unnamed countries and that users can switch back.

On Facebook, some users in India and Indonesia are landing directly in a full-screen video feed, according to TechCrunch as cited by PetaPixel. Users in the test can opt out, and the classic feed remains available as a second tab. PetaPixel reports that Facebook head Tom Alison first outlined the idea in July and said the company will explore bringing it to the US next year.

For creators, the implication may be simple. If Meta's apps increasingly open on vertical video, short-form clips could get more prominent placement there. Posting the same content on Reels as on TikTok may become more worthwhile, even as promoting one platform on the other gets harder.

PetaPixel frames this as part of a wider shift. It cites YouTube's May figure of more than two billion hours of Shorts watched on TVs each month and Netflix's plans to center its phone app on vertical video. It also mentions a UK study suggesting users are posting less as short-form video dominates.

What to watch

• Whether Meta's ad ban expands beyond the seven countries named, and how strictly it is enforced on individual creators' boosted posts.
• How TikTok applies its link rule in practice, and which kinds of links it treats as opening other social apps.
• Whether the Facebook video-first experience reaches the US next year, as Alison suggested, and whether Instagram's Reels-first setting moves beyond a test.
• Any response from TikTok to Meta's ban, which none of this week's reports included.