Twitter threatens to SUE Meta over Threads

Twitter is threatening to file a lawsuit against Meta over its new Threads platform, accusing it of poaching former employees to create a ‘copycat’ app.

‘Twitter has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (Meta’) has engaged in systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property,’ Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro wrote in a letter released Thursday.

‘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.

The social-media platform owned by Elon Musk threatened legal action the same day Meta went live with Threads.

Meta creator Mark Zuckerberg painted Threads as a Twitter rival and has seen 30 million people sign-up since the debut.

piro accused Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who ‘had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.’

He also claimed Meta assigned those staffers to create ‘copycat ‘Threads’ with the intent to use Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property in order to further the development of Twitter’s competitor.

‘Meta is expressly prohibited from engaging in any crawling or scraping of Twitter’s followers or following data. As set forth in Twitter’s Terms of Service, crawling any Twitter services,’ the letter stated.

The letter alleged the app is in violation of both state and federal law as well as those employees ‘ongoing obligations to Twitter.’

Threads – which is trying to appeal to Twitter users by offering longer posts and accounts linked to their Instagram.

The decision to create the rival comes after Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44billion. Since then, Musk spearheaded a series of controversial moves – including cutting staff and limiting the number of messages people can see a day.