Twitter Threatens Meta With A Lawsuit Over Threads

Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over complaints over its new Threads app. According to a letter received by Semafor. Twitter attorney Alex Spiro claims in a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that Twitter’s trade secrets and intellectual property were utilized by Meta to create Threads.

Considering how many individuals were let go after Musk’s acquisition, Spiro, who also serves as Elon Musk’s personal attorney and is a partner at the law firm Quinn Emanuel, claimed that Meta employed “dozens” of ex-Twitter employees to build Threads.

However, Twitter claims that many of these former employees still have access to its trade secrets and other sensitive data. Twitter claims that Meta allegedly exploited this situation and assigned these staff members the duty of creating a “copycat” software “in violation of both state and federal law.”

Twitter is threatening legal action as a result, saying that it will use “both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.” Additionally, it “demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Trade Secrets or other highly Confidential Information” and states that Meta is not permitted to scan or scrape Twitter’s data. 

The communications director at Meta, Andy Stone, responded to Twitter’s letter in a threaded post by saying, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.” Stone regards Twitter’s accusations are baseless. Because Twitter isn’t afraid to threaten legal action, it’s possible that Meta isn’t really bothered about this. Twitter charged Microsoft in May with misusing the company’s API by integrating some of its products.

On Wednesday night, Meta launched Threads, and the first users were companies and celebrities. Threads has more than 30 million registered users less than 24 hours after its release, reports show that these users have already created over 95 million threads. Threads are spreading like wildfire.

 Twitter’s letter is an early sign that Threads is the most serious rival yet to Musk’s chaotic, but still central, platform. Musk  in a reply to a post about the letter on Twitter said, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”It’s expected that the next few weeks will witness heat generated by these 2 big rivals.

However, Meta has the capital and human resources necessary to effectively compete with Twitter. Additionally, in a short time, Threads has shown up like a hero allowing users to identify and import their Instagram followers without having to start from scratch, giving them access to a built-in network of billions of Instagram users on which to base their network. On the other hand, Meta has a history of crippling competitors with copycat successes. Reels is battling it out as a TikTok rival, while Instagram Stories has stunted Snapchat’s growth.