The Washington Post reportedly obtained internal documents that purportedly indicated Targeted Victory's strategy aimed to portray TikTok "as a risk to American youngsters."
According to a tweet by Zac Moffatt, the Post's article misrepresented their findings and "major elements are plain incorrect."
The BBC contacted Meta for a response.
"We believe all platforms, including TikTok, should receive a level of scrutiny consistent with their growing success," a spokeswoman said.
The Post journalists claimed that part of the "bare-knuckle" strategy was "promot[ing] spurious tales about apparent TikTok trends that actually began on Facebook" by submitting opinion pieces and letters to the editor to US regional news sites.
The report said that none of the letters to the editor or opinion pieces indicated that a Meta-funded organisation had been promoting them.
Mr. Moffat tweeted in response to the piece saying: "The narrative implies that neither the authors nor they were aware of Meta's involvement when the letters to the editor were written. This is untrue. They'll attest to that."
The newspaper asserted that Targeted Victory pressed its partners to get stories about TikTok's association with risky trends into regional media in internal emails.
One Targeted Victory employee allegedly stated in an email that was apparently viewed by the Post, "Dream would be to generate stories with titles like 'From dances to danger: how TikTok has become the most detrimental social media environment for kids'."
Challenges
The paper claimed that Targeted Victory pushed agents to publicize information on risky TikTok-related trends.
This included allegations of a rumored Slap a Teacher challenge, which an investigation by news site Insider suggested did not actually exist, and a purported Devious Licks challenge, which promoted destruction of school property.
However, the Post claimed that journalistic investigations indicated that news about both challenges started to circulate on Facebook.
After the article was published, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, a significant US teaching union, claimed that Facebook was to blame for stoking the fires of Devious Licks and terrifying "teachers, students, and parents across America as a result."
Even TikTok itself mirrored those apprehensions. The company responded to the article by telling the BBC that it was "very worried" that local media reporting on purported trends that had not been discovered on the platform could damage actual people in the real world.
Technology journalist Casey Newton responded to the post by writing in his newsletter Platformer that the effect went beyond discomfort and ran the risk of motivating people to take up the alleged challenges.
Even the possibility that Meta may have served as a model for such imitators should have been enough to put an end to the project while it was still being white-boarded, he argued.
Mr. Moffatt claimed in a tweet that The Post had written on the alleged TikTok challenges.
Media strategies
Targeted Victory describes itself as "right-of-centre", but Mr Moffatt said it managed "bipartisan teams".
In 2016, Mr Moffatt met with Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg as part of a group of high-profile conservative figures following allegations - which the firm denied - that it tampered with its Trending Topics feature, to promote "progressive" views.
Now it is Mr Moffatt's work with Meta that is attracting scrutiny. However, this latest incident is not the first time the strategies of firms hired by the social media giant have been criticised.
In 2018, the New York Times exposed tactics used by a public relations company, Definers, hired by Facebook.
The paper said the firm circulated a document falsely claiming anti-Facebook campaign group Freedom From Facebook was backed by the financier George Soros.
Mr Zuckerberg said he had not been aware of the Definers actions and said the company would no longer work with the firm.