August in the U.S. is a time for BBQs, swimming pools, social distancing, and, if Mark Zuckerberg has his way, the further entwining of your digital self into the data-hungry arms of Facebook’s ever-expanding grasp.
The advertising giant confirmed Thursday its plan to launch Reels, a competitor to the looping video app TikTok, in the U.S. next month. Notably, Reels will not be a standalone app à la Byte. Instead, it will be a part of Facebook-owned Instagram — think Stories, in the same way that Facebook stole that idea from Snapchat.
“We’re excited to bring Reels to more countries, including the US, in early August,” a Facebook spokesperson said over email. “The community in our test countries has shown so much creativity in short-form video, and we’ve heard from creators and people around the world that they’re eager to get started as well.”
Facebook could not have chosen a better time to release a TikTok rip-off in the U.S. The immensely popular app is in the middle of a privacy-related firestorm following nebulous allegations involving its Chinese parent company ByteDance. Facebook, which is no stranger to privacy scandals, apparently figures data abuse will be easier for Americans to swallow when it comes with a side of apple pie.
Notably, Facebook has made a spectacularly failed play at TikTok before. The company launched Lasso, a standalone TikTok clone, in November of 2018. It was just earlier this month that Facebook confirmed it was pulling the plug on that specific endeavor.
There it is.
Image: facebook
Lasso, it would seem, died so that Reels could live. Either that, or Facebook just assumed that shoving a looping video feature into an app people already have (Instagram) would be a lot easier than convincing them to download something new.
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Facebook first launched Reels this past November in Brazil, and in the intervening months has pushed it to France, Germany, and India. Americans, in Facebook’s eyes, are finally ready for that hot, looping action.
“With Reels, people can share with their friends + followers,” continued the spokesperson, “and, if they have a public account, they can share to Explore and may be discovered by the huge, diverse Instagram community.”
As Facebook vacuums up data on Reels usage, friends and followers won’t be the only group users share their data with. But hey, at this point, lighting your privacy on fire is as American as that aforementioned apple pie.