Meta’s own figures show the company lost 20 million users across the opening quarter of 2026. Facebook’s answer to that bleed isn’t homegrown — it’s lifted, one feature at a time, from the very apps pulling people away.
According to Facebook chief Tom Alison, the platform intends to trial a “reimagined experience” before the year is out, dropping a portion of its user base straight into “full-screen video the moment they open the app.” If that description reads like firing up TikTok, that’s precisely the point.
The full-screen feed nobody asked Facebook for
Meta offered no look at the redesigned interface — no screenshots, no demo, only the pitch itself. The rollout will reportedly begin in markets that already lean toward video, with a possible expansion into the US pencilled in for next year.
Facebook’s official justification: “video is where conversations are happening, communities are forming, and even commerce is starting to take place.” Sit with that line and it reads less like a strategy and more like a confession. The conversations relocated elsewhere, and Facebook is scrambling to follow them.
This isn’t a first, either. Back in 2020 Meta rolled out Reels on Instagram to take on TikTok directly. The company is now dusting off that same script for its oldest and biggest platform.
Alison said the opposite in 2022
Here’s the detail worth pausing on. Speaking to The Verge in 2022, Alison claimed he saw “TikTok chasing Facebook” — not the reverse. Fast-forward four years and Facebook is assembling a video feed that launches exactly the way TikTok’s does. Who was chasing whom is left for you to decide.
The underlying figures explain the alarm. Facebook is said to remain the world’s most-used social platform, yet YouTube is trailing closely, and TikTok isn’t far behind. TikTok reached 1 billion monthly users within three years of launching — quicker than Facebook hit the same mark. Since Meta doesn’t publish numbers for each of its platforms separately, that combined loss of 20 million becomes the figure to keep an eye on.
Seller is Craigslist, Forum is Reddit
The video feed isn’t the only lookalike arriving this year. Facebook is rolling out Seller today, a Craigslist-flavored app designed to let Marketplace sellers monitor performance, handle listings and chat with buyers all in one spot.
It comes on the heels of Forum, which Facebook debuted earlier in the year as a purpose-built hub for Facebook Groups. Functionally it resembles Reddit’s subreddit communities, only wearing Meta’s branding. Three competitors, three copied experiences, and a single company doing the borrowing.
A free verified badge, if you’ll show your face
Verification is shifting as well. Until now, Facebook’s blue check required a paid Meta Verified plan priced from $11.99 a month. The company now says it will hand out a free verified badge, earnable via what it calls a “simple selfie verification” step, intended to indicate that an account belongs to a genuine person.
That’s the bargain: surrender a selfie, dodge the subscription. Whether people read a free badge as reassurance or as yet another facial scan feeding Meta remains the open question — and Meta isn’t exactly the impartial voice to settle it.
For anyone who genuinely uses Facebook, a single one of these launches deserves your notice above the others. Seller is the useful one — a legitimate reason for Marketplace sellers to fire up the app. The full-screen video feed is the giveaway. When a platform this enormous begins opening like the very app siphoning off its audience, that’s not confidence. That’s a company backed into a corner.