Staff Writer
Tens of millions of people have downloaded Meta’s new text-based program, Threads, since it launched last week as a competitor to Elon Musk’s social networking platform. Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta over this.
Alex Spiro, an attorney for Twitter, accused Meta of illegally utilizing Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property by enlisting former Twitter employees to develop a “copycat” software in a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday.
The move, which targets individuals looking for Twitter alternatives in light of the modifications Musk has made to the platform since purchasing it for $44 billion last year, heightens tensions between the major social media players after Threads made its debut on Wednesday.
It was said on Threads on Thursday by Meta representative Andy Stone: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee – that’s just not a thing.”
Spiro stated in the letter that Twitter “intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights” and mentioned the company’s right to ask for legal remedies or a court order. The news website Semafor broke the story first on Thursday.
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.
Musk responded to a tweet regarding Meta possibly facing legal action by writing, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
Spiro was contacted by the Associated Press on Thursday in order to obtain more details. Twitter’s normal reaction to journalists was a nasty automated reply in response to an email requesting comment.
Linda Yaccarino, the new CEO of Twitter, did not publicly address the letter but did seem to address its introduction.
Yaccarino tweeted, “We’re frequently mimicked, but the Twitter community can never be reproduced.
According to some analysts, Meta’s new product, marketed as a text-based equivalent of the photo-sharing app Instagram, might cause Twitter a lot of trouble due to the hype surrounding its introduction and high initial download rates.
Success isn’t assured, though. Industry observers point out that Threads is still in its early stages and mention Meta’s history of developing independent apps that were eventually shut down.
Along with various bugs and complaints over missing functions, Meta’s new app has also sparked concerns about data protection. Although Threads was made available in more than 100 nations, the European Union, which has stringent data privacy laws, is one notable exception.
