Twitter: Twitter threatens to sue Meta over stealing trade secrets and making “copycat” app – Times of India

Just a day after the rollout of the Threads app, its biggest competitor’s lawyer has written a rather threatening letter to Meta. According to a Semafor, Alex Spiro, who is Elon Musk’s lawyer accused Meta of making a “copycat app”. Spiro also said that Meta had employed ex-Twitter employees to work on the app. A copy of the letter was seen by online publication Semafor.
‘Stop using trade secrets’
In his letter — addressed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — Spiro said, “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.” Furthermore, Musk’s lawyer also warned Meta not to indulge in data scraping from Twitter.
He also alleged that Meta had deliberately used former Twitter employees to make a “copycat” app. On Musk’s behalf, Spiro accused Meta of hiring former Twitter employees and rather bizarrely admitted that they continue to have access to Twitter’s “highly confidential information.” This is something that Meta has outrightly denied.
“No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee,” Andy Stone, Meta communications director, posted on Threads. “That’s just not a thing.”
The Threads app is off to a flying start. In just over 24 hours, Threads has seen more than 30 million signups, which should be worrying Musk and Twitter. The timing of the letter sent to Meta does indicate that there are perhaps a few nervous heads at Twitter.
Threads does look like a mix of Instagram and Twitter. Users can share photos, just like on Twitter. As far as videos are concerned, users can post videos that are up to five minutes long. Threads is available on iOS and Android from the App Store and Play Store respectively. Users can access Threads from the desktop site as well.