Elon Musk, the executive chairman of Twitter, has accused Meta, formerly known as Facebook, of “cheating” with the release of Threads, a text-based social network resembling Twitter. Musk expressed his acceptance of competition but stated his intolerance towards cheating. This statement comes in response to a letter sent by Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, threatening legal action.
Spiro’s letter, dated July 5, stated Twitter’s intention to rigorously enforce its intellectual property rights and demanded that Meta immediately cease using Twitter’s trade secrets. The letter alleged that Meta had hired former Twitter employees who had access to confidential information, including trade secrets, and assigned them to develop a “copycat” application called Threads. Twitter claimed that Meta used their trade secrets and intellectual property to expedite the development of the competing app.
Additionally, Spiro’s letter served as a formal notice to Meta to preserve any relevant documents related to the dispute between Twitter and Meta, as well as any former Twitter employees now employed by Meta. The letter also emphasized that Meta is prohibited from engaging in crawling or scraping Twitter’s followers or following data without prior consent.
On July 5, Meta launched Threads, its new text-based social network, in 100 countries. The release of Threads followed Twitter’s recent rate limit issue, where the platform temporarily restricted the number of posts users could read.
The allegations and legal threats indicate a brewing conflict between Twitter and Meta over intellectual property rights and the development of similar social networking applications. The situation may escalate as the two companies navigate this dispute in the coming days and weeks.
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