No one on Threads Engineering Team is from Twitter: Andy Stone
After a few hours after its launch, Threads, the app that Meta launched to compete with Twitter, faced legal issues. Though the app has already racked up over 50 million users since its launch, Twitter has threatened legal action, alleging that Threads violates Twitter's "intellectual property rights" and is therefore infringing upon such rights.
The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, has received a letter from Elon Musk's attorney Alex Spiro accusing him of "unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property." The news source Semafor was the first to publish the letter.
Twitter threatens to sue Meta over copying Threads
The accusation in the letter was that Meta had employed many former Twitter workers who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information."
“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,” in a letter written by Alex Spiro.
A tweet citing the revelation prompted Musk to respond, "Competition is fine, cheating is not."
In an effort to defend themselves, Meta asserted that none of the engineers at Threads earlier worked for Twitter.
"No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that's just not a thing," Meta spokesperson Andy Stone stated in a Threads post.
Though a number of prospective rivals have emerged for Musk-owned Twitter, one of the largest social media platforms in the world hasn't yet been replaced, thanks to Threads. Like Twitter, Threads allow users to present text and links and reply to or repost messages from others.
Instagram and Facebook, owned by Meta, have a long history of successfully ripping off the products of fledgling internet rivals. The company's Reels feature was a ripoff of the popular video app TikTok, and its Stories disappearing updates mimicked Snapchat's ascension.