Copy Paste

Facebook turned into the digital equivalent of a retirement home. Parents and grandparents colonized it, arguing about refugees and politics in the comments. Younger people were bailing to Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok—anywhere their parents weren’t.

TikTok was the real problem. Kids making short videos, lip-syncing, doing stupid challenges that either made them internet famous or killed them. The whole machinery of trends and influencers shifted there, and Facebook couldn’t compete.

So Facebook copied it. Lasso was TikTok repackaged under the Facebook umbrella. Same format, same appeal, different owner. They’d already pulled this off with Instagram Stories—lifted straight from Snapchat and basically killed the app. If it worked once, try it again.

The cynicism was almost elegant. They weren’t even pretending. Here’s your TikTok but make it Facebook. Here’s your Snapchat but make it Instagram. The app store as a filing cabinet of things they could buy or steal.

Whether anyone actually wanted Lasso was beside the point. The strategy was simpler: keep cloning until something sticks. They have the money, the user base, the patience. Eventually one of these knockoffs will work, or whatever comes next will already be halfway copied. By then Facebook will have moved on to stealing something else.