Twitter is considering legal action against Meta after the Instagram parent company launched its new text-based app called “Threads“, as reported by Semafor.
Twitter Threatens To Take Legal Action Against Meta Over Threads
For those unaware, Meta on Wednesday launched Threads, the company’s standalone Twitter competitor designed by Instagram. This is a text-based microblogging social media platform, similar to Twitter and other apps, which allows users to post up to 500 characters of text, up to 5 minutes of video and links, and images.
While Meta bosses have promoted the new app as a “friendly” alternative, this has certainly not gone down well with folks at Twitter, especially the company’s CEO Elon Musk.
While reports of Twitter threatening legal action against Meta are doing the rounds, Musk has responded to a tweet by a page called T(w)itter Daily News.
The tweet mentioned the possibility of legal action against Meta over the “systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation” of Twitter’s trade secrets and IP in creating its new Threads app.
While Musk did not respond directly to the possibility of legal action, the Tesla chief wrote, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
Competition is fine, cheating is not
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2023
Meanwhile, Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro wrote a letter to Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, on Wednesday and accused him of hiring former Twitter employees to create a “copycat” app by unlawfully stealing Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.
Spiro wrote, “Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information.”
He also noted, “Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.”
Andy Stone, Meta’s Communications Director, denied Twitter’s claims and wrote in Threads on Thursday: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”
Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, too took a dig at Threads and said in a tweet on Thursday that while the platform is “often imitated,” it “can never be duplicated.”
On Twitter, everyone's voice matters.
Whether you’re here to watch history unfold, discover REAL-TIME information all over the world, share your opinions, or learn about others — on Twitter YOU can be real.
YOU built the Twitter community.
And that's irreplaceable. This…
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) July 6, 2023
Since its launch on Wednesday, the Threads app has amassed over 30 million sign-ups, according to Meta.
“Instagram is where billions of people around the world connect over photos and videos. Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text, creating a positive and creative space to express your ideas,” Meta said in an official statement.
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