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TWITTER THREATENED TO sue Meta just hours after the Instagram parent company launched Threads, an app it hopes will beat out the struggling site owned by Elon Musk.
In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, published by online news outlet Semafor yesterday, Musk lawyer Alex Spiro accused the company of “unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property”.
The letter accused Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information”.
Threads is the biggest challenger yet to Musk-owned Twitter, which has seen a series of potential competitors emerge but not yet replace one of the world’s biggest social media platforms, despite its struggles.
Zuckerberg’s latest move against Musk further heightened the rivalry between the two multibillionaires who have even agreed to meet for hand to hand combat in a cage match.
Threads went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries at 11pm on Wednesday, and early feedback noted its close, but scaled back, resemblance to Twitter.
Within a few hours, more than 30 million people had downloaded Threads, Zuckerberg said yesterday.
“Feels like the beginning of something special, but we’ve got a lot of work ahead to build the app,” Zuckerberg wrote on his official Threads account.
Accounts were already active for celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Oprah Winfrey and Hugh Jackman, as well as media outlets including The Washington Post and The Economist.
Zuckerberg wrote: “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it.”
“Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”
Twitter has said it has more than 200 million daily users.
Musk meanwhile retweeted an image that said the Threads logo resembled a tapeworm. “Metaphorically too,” he added.
In another post referencing Twitter’s potential legal action against Meta, Musk noted that “competition is fine, cheating is not”.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said on Threads: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee – that’s just not a thing.”
Threads was introduced as a spin-off of Instagram, giving it a built-in audience of more than two billion users and sparing the new platform the challenge of starting from scratch.
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri told users that Threads was intended to build “an open and friendly platform for conversations”.
“The best thing you can do if you want that too is be kind,” he said.
Zuckerberg is taking advantage of Musk’s chaotic ownership of Twitter to push out the new product, which Meta hopes will become the go-to platform for celebrities, companies and politicians.
Analyst Jasmine Engberg from Insider Intelligence said Threads only needs one out of four Instagram monthly users “to make it as big as Twitter”.
“Twitter users are desperate for an alternative, and Musk has given Zuckerberg an opening,” she added.
Under Musk, Twitter has seen content moderation reduced to a minimum with glitches and rash decisions scaring away celebrities and major advertisers.
He also fired more than half of Twitter’s staff, some of whom presumably went to other tech companies, including Meta.
Meta has its legion of critics too, especially in the major market of Europe, which could slow the growth of Threads.
The company has been criticised for its handling of personal data, the essential ingredient for targeted ads that help it rake in billions of dollars in profits.
Mosseri said he regretted that the launch was delayed in the European Union, but had Meta waited for regulatory clarity from Brussels, Threads would have been “many, many, many, months away”.
According to a source close to the matter, Meta was wary of a new law called the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that sets strict rules for the world’s “gatekeeper” internet companies.
One rule restricts platforms from moving user data between products, as would potentially be the case between Threads and Instagram.
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Not a free speech absolutelist when it suits him
@Colm O’ Shea: for those that actually believe Musk is about free speech, I have some magic beans to sell you.
@Colm O’ Shea: More an issue of appropriation of intellectual property than anything to do with free speech. It seems this particular company imitates more than innovates.
@JedBartlett: Imitation and the appropriation of intellectual property are usually two separate things.
I hope this helps.
@JedBartlett: to be fair, all that has to be done there is enter “Truth Social” into the equation which is a carbon copy of Twitter. Threads is just Instagram without the photos. Then you’d have to bring into it, other micro-blogging platforms that pre-date Twitter. It’s a nothing burger.
Man gets angry when fired employees find new jobs
@Jimmy The Mink: Exactly, the neck of him. Did he expect them to go down the mines?
It’s a sad day when I feel I have to be gunning for Mark Zuckerberg…
Journal commenters dislike free speech champion, why am I not surprised?
@Irish Sceptic: Musk fired twitter staff and journalists who were critical of him, but OK
@Irish Sceptic: We are pleased to note that our global partner and all around poster boy for the elite, Elon Musk, who’s private company SpaceX has won a competitive contract to conduct secret national security launches for the US military, has convinced many people that actors such as himself champion free speech. This is for your greater good.
@Sylvia Power: It’s his company, and most of them spent their days censoring opinions they didn’t like.
Good riddance.
@Corporate Interests: Twitter has improved since he took over, that’s all I’m saying.
@Irish Sceptic: Fine, but he shouldn’t whinge when they find jobs somewhere else.
@Irish Sceptic: We approve of Linda Yaccarinos appointment by Musk as the CEO of Twitter. Ms. Yaccarino, the former head of NBC Universal Advertising and Partnerships, and tip of the spear in the creation of DEI (Diversity Equity and Inclusion) indexing and corporate scoring. Ms. Yaccarino is one of the pioneers in our advertising industry and we have asked her to tread more lightly with respect to pushing our agenda through various platforms including Twitter, as we do note her previous campaigns to influence the public have been less than successful, in part. We do recognise the nature of her range of skills in advertising and in shaping public opinion and therefor we are generally pleased with her appointment. It is for your greater good.
@Irish Sceptic: Musk literally fired people for exercising their free speech. Your point would have more weight if it weren’t based on lies.
@Mercurial Murial: Read Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files.
When’s the MMA cage fight
Why did he let ex employees continue to have access to trade secrets.
Must have fired his infosec office too.
@Michael O’Neill: Presumably, those who were fired from Twitter had the IP in their heads, and didn’t still need access to Twitter’s network.
@Stephen Wallis: He’ll have a good time trying to prove they had IP in their heads.
So, if this takes off Meta will control 80% of what kids see on social media. And on signing up they are giving complete permission to access their ‘financial data’, ‘health data’, ‘browsing history’, ‘sensitive info’, and ‘other data’ Bodes well for the future this.
i said it before and will say it again, he paid well over the odds for Twitter at 33 billion.
Only thing Twitter had was millions of users, so although an advantage, barrier to entry low for companies like Meta and they apparently have 3x times the users/subscribers.
have your say