Staff Writer
How much does Twitter resemble the chatty new Instagram app, Threads?
Twitter threatened legal action against Instagram parent firm Meta in a cease-and-desist letter earlier this week over the new text-based app Threads, which it branded a “copycat.”
Since its debut as Elon Musk’s newest social media competitor, Threads has attracted millions of members.
Legal experts point out that there are still many questions, and the threads’ founders have rebuffed the charges. As of right now, “it’s sort of a big question mark,” said intellectual property expert Jacob Noti-Victor, an associate professor at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School.
However, many who are just beginning to study Threads are already coming to their own conclusions.
“People are calling it a Twitter clone, but I think there are some key product differences,” said Alexandra Popken, a former leader of Twitter’s trust and safety operations.
She anticipates that one distinction will be the users. When using Threads, “you’re essentially taking your audience from Instagram and putting this into a new text-based app, whereas Twitter is kind of a niche audience for politicians, celebrities, and news junkies,” she explained.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that Threads’ creators have stated they are not particularly interested in turning it into a political platform, it is expected to draw journalists and politicians among other users searching for an alternative to Twitter.
Threads is not intended to replace Twitter, according to Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram.
The objective, he explained, was to “create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less combative place for conversations, but not all of Twitter.”
He admitted that politics and serious news would unavoidably appear on Threads, but added, “We’re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals.”
An attorney for Twitter, Alex Spiro, accused Meta of utilizing Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property illegally by enlisting former Twitter employees to develop a “copycat” software in a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday.
Musk responded to a tweet regarding Meta possibly facing legal action by writing, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
Andy Stone, a representative for Meta, reacted in a Threads post on Thursday, saying that “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee.”
Noti-Victor said it’s difficult to determine what the trade secrets mentioned in Spiro’s letter — which was originally received by news organization Semafor on Thursday — might be.
In violation of existing confidentiality commitments, Spiro claims that former Twitter workers “improperly retained” company records and technological equipment. However, the letter made no clear mention of a violation of any legally enforceable agreement, and many noncompete agreements, for instance, are illegal in California.
Furthermore, despite Threads’ resemblance to Twitter, “just the idea of creating a social media platform involving text (is) certainly not something that would be a trade secret,” Noti-Victor continued.
For similar reasons, he is dubious of intellectual property violations, pointing out that businesses “can’t patent something that’s obvious” or copyright a broad concept for a social media site. The text and source code of a website can be protected by copyright, but Noti-Victor claimed he doesn’t see that happening in Threads.
According to experts, Silicon Valley businesses frequently create goods or services that are models for their rivals’ offerings.
The demand for a better, safer alternative to Twitter is being tapped into by platforms like Threads and Mastodon, according to Popken, who noted that the industry has a long history of sharing ideas.
Meta has a history of launching separate applications that copy rivals, however many of these have since shut down.
In addition to claims of trade secrets and infringement on intellectual property, Spiro stated that Meta is forbidden from “engaging in any crawling or scraping of Twitter’s followers or following data.” According to him, the letter served as a “formal notice” to Meta to hold onto records important to a prospective legal battle between the two companies.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, stated that any letter of this nature should be treated seriously, but he also emphasized that there are still many questions. If legal action is taken, more specific allegations and documentation might surface.
Tobias hypothesized that Twitter’s action may have been partly motivated by publicity as well as a calculated commercial and legal response.
Similar actions have already been taken by Musk’s legal team, such as a May letter to Microsoft objecting to the purported usage of Twitter data to train AI systems.
Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and former CEO, was one of those who brought up the clone-or-not debate this week. Dorsey has supported Bluesky and quipped in a tweet that “we wanted flying cars, instead we got 7 Twitter clones.”
What most strikes out about Threads so far for Popken, who is currently employed by content moderation firm WebPurify, is how much enjoyment she is getting from using it.
“I see companies attempting to be humorous, like Slim Jim. I see Instagram influencers that I follow and real-life friends,” the woman remarked.
But she cautioned, “make no mistake, these issues with content filtering that have dogged other platforms [will] undoubtedly strike Threads over time.
