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Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over concerns about its new Threads app, according to a letter obtained by Semafor. In the letter, which is addressed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro argues that Meta used Twitter’s trade secrets and intellectual property to build Threads.

Spiro, who is also Elon Musk’s personal lawyer and a partner at the Quinn Emanuel law firm, claims that Meta hired “dozens” of ex-Twitter employees to develop Threads, which wouldn’t be all that surprising given just how many people were fired following Musk’s takeover.

But according to Twitter, many of these former workers still have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other confidential information. Twitter alleges that Meta took advantage of this and tasked these employees with developing a “copycat” app “in violation of both state and federal law.”

As a result, Twitter is threatening legal action in the form of “both civil remedies and injunctive relief.” It also “demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information” and says Meta isn’t allowed to crawl or scrape Twitter’s data, either.

Meta responded to Twitter’s letter in a post on Threads, with communications director Andy Stone stating, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.” Meta doesn’t seem all too concerned about this, and that may be because Twitter isn’t all that shy about threatening legal action. In May, Twitter accused Microsoft of abusing the company’s API through integrations with some of its products.

Meta launched Threads on Wednesday night, with celebrities and brands the first to get on board. Less than 24 hours since the app’s launch, Threads has garnered over 30 million registered users, while internal data obtained by The Verge’s Alex Heath indicates that users have already made over 95 million threads.

“Competition is fine, cheating is not,” Musk said in a reply to a post about the letter on Twitter.

(page 2) 34 comments
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[-] gornar@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Not very good trade secrets if Zuck knew them!

[-] btaf45@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Didn't know that Fedverse technology was one of Twitter's trade secrets. LOL.

[-] gornar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Next he's going to sue whoever he can because email already exists! And we type! With words! LAWSUIT

[-] TheRaven@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

Oh so NOW he finds Twitter employees valuable.

[-] ThatGirlKylie@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Do I have to opt out of threads? I have no intention of ever using it but I don’t want it to automatically be created just bc I have a Facebook.

[-] faltuuser@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

You don't have to opt out of anything. Threads account won't get automatically created. But delete Instagram anyways. And god forbid if you actually have their app installed.

[-] zeppo@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

You have to opt in by signing up and importing your account. It uses your IG account, so you don’t have to choose a new name and password, but they don’t automatically set it up.

[-] MindCap@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Facebook will no doubt be creating shadow profiles of every fediverse account it comes across and there's nothing you can do about it.

[-] ThatGirlKylie@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Well damn. Didn’t think of that.

[-] Teon@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Cage fight, Cage Fight, CAGE FIGHT!!!

[-] brad@toad.work 4 points 1 year ago

Oh no please not Meta.

[-] andypiper@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

This is hilarious and I am here for it. They can't pay their bills, can't imagine they have funds to get a legal case together.

[-] gentleman@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

@faltuuser Definitely time to grab the popcorn for this one. Hopefully Zuck and Elon damage their respective business to no end. If the jurisdiction of any litigation is California, Elon is going to have an uphill battle.

[-] giacomo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

The shepherds battled for the sheep.

[-] gentleman@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

@faltuuser Definitely time to grab the popcorn for this one. Hopefully Zuck and Elon damage their respective business to no end. If the jurisdiction of any litigation is California, Elon is going to have an uphill battle.

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this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
458 points (96.2% liked)

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