Twitter Sues Meta Over Threads App

Twitter is taking legal action against Meta less than 24 hours after the launch of its new Threads app, as Semafor first reported. The Elon Musk-owned company claims Meta poached former Twitter employees to create the platform. Twitter sues Meta over the Threads app.

Threads, a text-based platform similar to Twitter, has already gained 30 million sign-ups since its introduction yesterday evening.

Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Twitter, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accusing the social media giant of unlawfully misappropriating Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.

In the letter, which Semafor shared online, Spiro stated that Twitter would strictly enforce its intellectual property rights and demanded that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information.

Twitter reserves the right to take legal action, including civil remedies and injunctive relief, against Meta to prevent them from further retaining, disclosing, or using its intellectual property.

This action will be taken without any prior notice. Spiro also accused Meta of hiring numerous former Twitter employees who have had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other confidential information.

The letter claims that these employees were instructed to create an imitation app using Twitter’s “trade secrets and other intellectual property, to speed up the development of Meta’s competing app. This action, according to the letter, violates state and federal law, as well as the employees’ ongoing commitments to Twitter.

Andy Stone, Meta’s communications director, responded to Twitter’s letter on Threads: “We want to make it clear that no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee – that’s not the case.”

Since Elon Musk took over Twitter last year, various competitors of Twitter, including Threads, have experienced a surge in popularity. However, Twitter’s swift response to Threads suggests that it is the most prominent rival.

Linda Yaccarino, Twitter CEO, threw shade at the new platform by Musk earlier today. In a tweet, Yaccarino boldly declared that “Twitter is often imitated, but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.”

She emphasized that Twitter is a platform where everyone’s voice matters, a place where people can connect in real time and share their opinions.

You created the Twitter community, and that’s irreplaceable. This shows how much you care about giving people a better way to express themselves. Congratulations! 🙏👏

Mastodon and Bluesky have both gained considerable attention, but Threads has seen a quicker adoption rate. Threads is available to iOS and Android users in 100 countries, except for the EU, likely due to data privacy regulations.

To use Threads, users must first authenticate using their Instagram login credentials. Then, Threads will be populated with the user’s existing details, such as name, username, photo, and followers.

It’s now live!