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Social media war begins as Twitter threatens to sue Meta over Threads debut
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By Nithya Bose in Twitter/X News, posted July 7, 2023
Twitter has threatened to sue Meta after the hit launch of the Threads app, a clear indication that Twitter views it as a competitive threat.
Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro called the app a “copycat’ in a letter sent to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
He also accused the company of trade secret theft by hiring former Twitter employees.
Read More: Meta launches Twitter killer app ‘Threads’
The letter alleges Meta engaged in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
Musk tweeted in response to reports on the letter: “Competition is fine, cheating is no.”
Spiro wrote Twitter “demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information.”
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Meta spokesperson Andy Stone dismissed the letter, saying none of the engineers on the Threads team are former Twitter employees.
The legal threat from Twitter comes after Meta reported significant growth, with 30 million user sign-ups within the first day of Threads' release.
Threads holds the top position as the number-one free app on the iOS App Store.
While the legal threat may not necessarily lead to litigation, it could be part of a strategy to impede Meta's progress.
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Law professor Carl Tobias suggests lawyers sometimes issue threats without following through, testing their boundaries.
Tobias also speculates there may be value in complicating Meta's situation through litigation.
Twitter’s move highlights the strong competition in the microblogging platform, with a growing number of smaller platforms challenging established players like Twitter.
However, Twitter has not issued legal threats against other rivals such as Mastodon and Bluesky.
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