Instagram is reportedly offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to persuade high-profile TikTok creators to use its new rival short-video service, Reels, which is expected to roll out in the U.S. next month. (The Wall Street Journal)

Talking point: TikTok has surpassed the Facebook-owned Instagram with two billion global downloads as of April. Facebook tried to compete with TikTok in 2018 but its copycat app Lasso was downloaded less than 600,000 times before the company shut it down. The competition between the two firms has been escalating, with TikTok poaching dozens of Facebook and Google employees as part of its expansion, even as it faces scrutiny from Washington over privacy and security concerns tied to its Chinese ownership. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign just ordered staff to delete the app from personal and work phones. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly set to make patriotism a theme in his testimony at a congressional antitrust committee Wednesday, further positioning Facebook as a homegrown tech champion versus the ByteDance-owned TikTok.