Twitter sent a legal warning to its competitor Meta, Semafor said on July 6.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, earlier released its Threads app. The product has been widely described as a competitor to Twitter or a “Twitter killer,” something Twitter itself has taken note of.
Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Twitter, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg after the launch of the platform. That letter calls Threads a “copycat” app, saying:
“Based on recent reports about its recently launched ‘Threads’ app, Twitter has serious concerns that Meta… has engaged in systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
Spiro also contended that Meta deliberately hired numerous former Twitter employees. Those employees, Spiro claimed, used trade secrets and inside information to further the development of Threads. Those actions would violate state and federal laws, as well as employees’ current obligations to Twitter, Spiro said.
Spiro’s letter added that Twitter is determined to “strictly enforce its intellectual property rights” and demanded that Meta stop using any trade secrets or confidential information derived from Twitter. Spiro cautioned that Twitter reserves the right to take legal action, including civil remedies and injunctive relief, to prevent further use of your IP.
Other people involved have also commented on the matter. Elon Musk, CTO and CEO of Twitter, implicitly endorsed the legal threat in a July 6 tweet. He wrote: “competition is fine, cheating is not”.
Meta communications director Andy Stone denied the claims. He explicitly stated to Semafor that no former Twitter employees are on Threads’ team.
Twitter is experiencing broader issues
Twitter placed a frequency cap on viewable content days before Meta’s Threads went live and said this limit was implemented to limit bot activity.
The firm did not explicitly say that it imposed the limit before the release of Threads. However, Spiro’s letter also directed Meta to refrain from scraping or tracking data from Twitter, suggesting that the two concerns are at least adjacent to each other.
Twitter has experienced many other controversies since Elon Musk acquired the company in October 2022. Certain issues, specifically less-restrictive content policy policies that some say allow hate speech, have led users to switch to decentralized alternatives. of social networks like Mastodon.
Some crypto hopefuls believe that the backlash against Twitter could benefit Web3 and blockchain-based social networks such as Peepeth, Lens Protocol, and Damus.
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