Twitter threatens to sue Meta over rival app Threads

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Friday, July 7, 2023 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2019
Image: Anthony Quintano.

On Wednesday, an attorney for Twitter, Alex Spiro, sent a letter to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, alleging that Meta stole trade secrets to help create a "copycat" rival app, Threads.

The letter accused Meta of "systemic, wilful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property", further alleging that the company hired "dozens" of employees who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information". It demanded that "Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information".

Elon Musk, who bought Twitter for US$44 billion last year, said in response to a tweet regarding the letter that "competition is fine, cheating is not".

Threads was released on Wednesday in over 100 countries, and 70 million users had signed up by today, according to head of Instagram Adam Mosseri. However, it has yet to be released in the European Union due to Meta being unsure about the obligations placed on it by the Digital Markets Act, passed last year by the bloc.

The functionality of the app is similar to that of Twitter, allowing users to write 500-character posts on the app, as well as replying to, reposting, and quoting other users' posts. In a post on the platform, Mark Zuckerberg expressed his optimism about the future of Threads: "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."

Sources

• Adam Mosseri. "I joined Meta, then Facebook, 15 years ago today. We were four years old, had ~450 employees, had just translated the site, and had ~70M people. Today we hit that many signups on Threads." — Threads (app), July 7, 2023
• Bernd Debusmann Jr. "Threads: Twitter threatens legal action over Meta's new app" — BBC, July 7, 2023
• PA Media. "Twitter threatens legal action over Meta’s rival app Threads" — Scottish Television, July 7, 2023
• Giulia Carbonaro. "Why has Threads, Meta’s answer to Twitter, not launched in the EU?" — Euronews, July 6, 2023
• Clare Duffy. "What is Threads? Here’s what you need to know about the potential ‘Twitter Killer’" — CNN, July 6, 2023
• Rob Wile. "A timeline of Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter" — NBC, November 17, 2022