Twitter threatens to sue Meta over rival app Threads

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

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This audio file was created from the text revision dated July 12, 2023 and may not reflect subsequent text edits to this report. (audio help)

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On Wednesday, an attorney for Twitter, Alex Spiro, sent a letter to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg alleging his company stole trade secrets to help create a "copycat" rival app, Threads.

The letter accused Meta of "systemic, wilful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property", including by hiring "dozens" of employees who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information". It demanded that "Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information".

In a tweet, Elon Musk, who bought Twitter for US$44 billion last year, said regarding the letter that "competition is fine, cheating is not".

The Threads app interface is similar to Twitter's, allowing users to write 500-character posts, as well as replying to, reposting, and quoting other users' posts. In a post on the platform, Zuckerberg expressed his optimism about the future of Threads: "It'll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn't nailed it. Hopefully we will."

Within two days of Threads' release in over 100 countries, over 70 million users had signed up, according to head of Instagram Adam Mosseri. However, it has yet to be released in the European Union, reportedly due to Meta's uncertainty about restrictions imposed by the Digital Markets Act the bloc passed last year.

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Sources

Adam Mosseri. "Adam Mosseri on Threads" — Threads (app), July 7, 2023
Bernd Debusmann Jr. "Threads: Twitter threatens legal action over Meta's new app" — BBC, July 7, 2023
PA Media. "Twitter threatens legal action over Meta’s rival app Threads" — Scottish Television, July 7, 2023
Giulia Carbonaro. "Why has Threads, Meta’s answer to Twitter, not launched in the EU?" — Euronews, July 6, 2023
Clare Duffy. "What is Threads? Here’s what you need to know about the potential ‘Twitter Killer’" — CNN, July 6, 2023
Rob Wile. "A timeline of Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter" — NBC News, November 17, 2022

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Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

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