"Copycat" Platform: Twitter Threatens To Sue Meta Over Threads

After the successful launch of Instagram Threads, the Twitter platform, led by Elon Musk, has issued a stern warning to Meta, formerly known as Facebook, threatening legal action over allegations of trade secret misappropriation and the hiring of former Twitter employees for their new "copycat" platform. Within just 24 hours of its release, the new platform amassed over 30 million users.

According to reports from Semafor, Twitter's lawyer, Alex Spiro, sent a letter to Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, accusing the company of engaging in a deliberate and unlawful appropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property. Spiro emphasized Twitter's commitment to enforcing its intellectual property rights and demanded immediate action from Meta to cease using any Twitter trade secrets or highly confidential information.

In the letter, Spiro asserted, "Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.," as per a report in NDTV.

Furthermore, Spiro raised concerns about Meta's hiring practices, alleging that the company had recruited numerous former Twitter employees who possessed and still have access to Twitter's trade secrets and highly confidential information.

"Twitter Can Never Be Duplicated"

Meta's communications director, Andy Stone, dismissed Twitter's allegations as baseless, stating, "No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee—that's just not a thing." Elon Musk also weighed in on the matter, expressing his opinion through a tweet, "Competition is fine, cheating is not."

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino joined the discussion, appealing to the Twitter community to remain united. She stressed the importance of every individual's voice on the platform and emphasized that the Twitter community cannot be replicated. Yaccarino acknowledged the community's contributions to building Twitter and referred to it as their irreplaceable public square.

"We are often imitated, but the Twitter community can never be duplicated," Yaccarino declared.

Threads, the app launched by Meta on Thursday, has already amassed an impressive user base of over 50 million within just one day, reported The text-based microblogging platform is closely integrated with Meta's renowned photo and video sharing service, Instagram. However, it's important to note that Meta is leveraging its existing user base of 2.35 billion active Instagram users to drive adoption and encourage sign-ups for Threads.

Alex Heath, a reporter from The Verge, shared in a Threads post on Friday that internal data from Meta revealed the app had exceeded 48 million user registrations. Additionally, Joe Scannell, a Threads user with the handle @joe_scannel, posted a screenshot displaying a recent Threads sign-up count surpassing the impressive milestone of 50 million users. To further incentivize users to join and engage with the service, Meta displays a serial number on each user's Instagram profile, indicating the date of their Threads registration.

How To Use Threads App?

Meta's latest app, Threads, requires users to have an Instagram account for login access. Once registered, users can choose to follow the same accounts they follow on Instagram, provided those accounts are also part of the Threads community. Visually resembling Twitter, Threads incorporates some terminology changes, such as referring to retweets as "reposts" and tweets as "threads." This is not the first time Meta has drawn inspiration from competitors, as seen with Instagram's Reels, a feature resembling TikTok's short-form videos.

Threads allows users to create posts with a maximum length of 500 characters, surpassing Twitter's 280-character limit for most users. Additionally, users can share videos up to five minutes in duration, and posts can be shared as links on other platforms. The app offers various user control features, including the ability to unfollow, block, restrict, or report other users. Users also have the option to filter out replies containing specific words.

The launch of Threads follows a challenging period for Twitter, which recently imposed tweet viewing limits in response to concerns regarding data harvesting by companies involved in AI model development. In subsequent posts on Threads, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the obstacles faced by Twitter and expressed his belief in the necessity of a public conversation app with a user base exceeding one billion people. While acknowledging Twitter's potential, he noted that the company has yet to fully capitalize on it. With Threads, Zuckerberg aims to bridge this gap by creating a platform that fulfills users' expectations for engaging public conversations.

Also Read: Meta Launches Threads App, 10 Million Users Sign Up In Just 7 Hours