Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads
Max Tani, reporting for Semafor:
On Wednesday, Instagram parent company Meta introduced Threads, a text-based companion to Instagram that resembles Twitter and other text-based social platforms. Just hours later, a lawyer for Twitter, Alex Spiro, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accusing the company of engaging in âsystematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitterâs trade secrets and other intellectual property.â
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Spiro accused Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who âhad and continue to have access to Twitterâs trade secrets and other highly confidential information.â
He also alleged that Meta assigned those employees to develop âMetaâs copycat âThreadsâ app with the specific intent that they use Twitterâs trade secrets and other intellectual property in order to accelerate the development of Metaâs competing app, in violation of both state and federal law as well as those employeesâ ongoing obligations to Twitter.â
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Andy Stone, Metaâs communications director, told Semafor that Twitterâs accusations are baseless. âNo one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employeeâââthatâs just not a thing,â he said.
Did Twitter overlook the fact that Meta's platforms have a larger userbase and more engineers than Twitter? Furthermore, even if ex-Twitter employees contributed to Threads, Elon Musk terminated their employment, giving them the opportunity to join a rival company.
The crux of this letter is that Musk perceives Threads as a threat and is envious of the extensive media coverage it is receiving, prompting him to lash out.