Meta allegedly hired lobbying firm to raise 'awareness' of TikTok harms

UPDATE - This blog did not age well as we are (yet again) on the verge of a TikTok ban.
UPDATED: The rabbit hole goes deeper. Meta and Apple handed over sensitive user data to Hackers disguised as law enforcement last year.

Currently everyone is talking about the emails recovered by The Washington Post from Meta directly. I'm not saying I believe one side or the other, but it raises several questions that have not been answered, or at least I haven't seen anything as of yet.

How were the emails recovered? Is there a whistleblower that provided the emails? Could this been even more convoluted where TikTok spoofed emails to appear coming from Meta to bolster their own brand (sometimes bad press brings good business...i.e. Chris Rock Ticket sales).

All tin foil conspiracy theories aside, this all begs the question that Facebook has been under severe scrutiny for quite some time. Why would they use a third party to smear a competitor, unless they were truly hurting. There are plenty of angles in which the situation can be perceived, plenty of closed door conference room huddles where none of us will ever know what truly goes on. As a user of the plethora of social platforms, this is alarming. Business can be cut throat, but to do something like this, and sloppily at that, is amateur. If this does turn out to be absolutely without a doubt true, for shame. But, I'm just one guy with an opinion.