Twitter warns it could sue Meta over “copycat” Threads app

Leclipse@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 333 points – Twitter warns it could sue Meta over “copycat” Threads app
theverge.com

Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over concerns about its new Threads app, according to a letter obtained by Semafor. In the letter, which is addressed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro argues that Meta used Twitter’s trade secrets and intellectual property to build Threads.

Spiro, who is also Elon Musk’s personal lawyer and a partner at the Quinn Emanuel law firm, claims that Meta hired “dozens” of ex-Twitter employees to develop Threads, which wouldn’t be all that surprising given just how many people were fired following Musk’s takeover.

But according to Twitter, many of these former workers still have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other confidential information. Twitter alleges that Meta took advantage of this and tasked these employees with developing a “copycat” app “in violation of both state and federal law.”

As a result, Twitter is threatening legal action in the form of “both civil remedies and injunctive relief.” It also “demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information” and says Meta isn’t allowed to crawl or scrape Twitter’s data, either.

Meta responded to Twitter’s letter in a post on Threads, with communications director Andy Stone stating, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.” Meta doesn’t seem all too concerned about this, and that may be because Twitter isn’t all that shy about threatening legal action. In May, Twitter accused Microsoft of abusing the company’s API through integrations with some of its products.

Meta launched Threads on Wednesday night, with celebrities and brands the first to get on board. Less than 24 hours since the app’s launch, Threads has garnered over 30 million registered users, while internal data obtained by The Verge’s Alex Heath indicates that users have already made over 95 million threads.

“Competition is fine, cheating is not,” Musk said in a reply to a post about the letter on Twitter.

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Such a dick too, like first you get fired because he doesn’t understand the business he bought and is cheap, then he acts like the employees were fired for being inadequate.

I hope someone sent him this with a "this you?"

Where is Elon's PR department? Man won't stop tarnishing his own reputation.

I'm fairly sure it doesn't take trade secrets to build a Twitter clone.

This guy would be three steps ahead of the PR. Dude publicly mocked a guy in a wheelchair who also happened to have a 100 million dollar clause if he was fired, which he was, publicly, on Twitter while having his HIPAA information released by his CEO because he thought he was malingering.

What PR firm could get ahead of that ONE day, let alone so many others of that level of holy shit? Not one that wants to stay profitable since he's supposedly stiffing other companies they do business with.

It has been about a decade since his reputation stopped being "tech visionary who will save the world" and started being "edgy pre-teen with a credit card that has no limit".

Well Twitter, Spotify, and Netflix are all like standard system design/architecture case studies and interview questions. Pretty sure Twitter has been invented like 300,000 times in various iterations. It’s not exactly like CocaCola’s recipe.

I think he literally fired the PR department at Twitter, and all emails from press are auto-replied to with a poop emoji. The man is such an unfunny child.

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Imagine convincing a judge/jury that Facebook doesn’t know how to make a social media site with pictures, videos, and short posts lmao

Knowing Elmo, it will come out that twitter stole facebook code or something.

Yeah lol. Also, like it’s some big trade secret how Twitter functions.

Musk is such a douche. Anyone with half a brain and a handful of resources was salivating at the thought of luring users to an alternative.

Jesus man.

I don't see how anyone could create a website that lets users post things without stealing the code. That's never been done before. /s

Well Elon... You could've avoided this if you just didn't laid them off as soon as you bought Twitter

Does anyone else feel like the core concept of Twitter is not really that interesting in the first place

I’ve gotten some decent use from Twitter over the years, and it was nice they doubled the character count, but I very much prefer places where I can read and post over one paragraph at a time. The concept of 140 characters sort of made sense when it was based on MMS, but it’s not clear if anyone ever even used that after the first couple of years. People would make longer posts by replying to themselves and chaining a dozen posts, but that is an excruciating interface for something that could just be one long post. Plus then people could “like” and reply to each segment individually which is sort of chaotic.
Reddit was the only social-media like site that was geared towards and appropriate for having longer discussions, but it seems like the owners want to dumb it down into TikTok/9Gag. I’m glad Lemmy is here for people who want to use a bunch of words at once and express complete thoughts.

Me think why waste time say lot word when few word do trick. When me president, they see, they see. -Wayne Gretzky -Michael Scott -Kevin Malone

It depends on what you're looking for. For me, Twitter is basically an RSS feed of news and people I want to hear from. It's not a social media network for me. That's why all I want is a reverse chronological feed.

For me, Twitter is basically an RSS feed

This has been a thing I've been saying since twitter was purchased. For most people it was just a pretty RSS feed for whatever interests people had. That's the only thing I ever used it for, for the 6 or so times I logged on over 9 years.

I wonder how many people use Twitter like that. There are so many communities that don’t bubble up to the mainstream on Twitter that it makes me question whether I’m an outlier or whether most people use it the way I do.

Twitter was an open canvas at first, that's what made it appealing. The users shaped it and norms formed. Then the bad men came.

It’s not just you. Twitter doesn’t now and never did anything Facebook doesn’t already do. It’s just a pared down Facebook experience.

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As amazing as it would be to have twitter taken down by scorned ex employees I’m inclined to believe meta when they say there aren’t any on the Instagram team. It will be fun to watch this play out not having skin in the game for either service.

it's not even unheard of for fired/quit employees to go to a competitor, especially in the tech sector.

That's like Tesla poaching Jim Keller from AMD post Zen for it's hardware division.... wait

Both Musk and Zuckerberg are horrible people, but while Zuck looks like the dangerous person, that has no regards for anything besides his own money and it's actually competent in doing his shady stuff, Musk seems like the petty dude that keeps talking shit and it's extremely incompetent, turning everything he touches into shit, but not because of some big plan, but because he it's way over his head.

Not saying he is not smart, but managing doesn't seem like his deal.

Zuck strikes me as lawful evil. What you see is what you get, and he will comply with the law and all agreements to their fullest extent and make as much money as possible within that framework. Stability is good because it's good for profits. Equality and equity are good because they make you money; as a corollary, bigotry is bad because it loses you money. Sustainability is good because the public loves it so you make more money. Zuck will flip on a dime if it makes him more money and nothing is personal, just business.

Musk is chaotic evil. It isn't enough that he's the richest man on earth because he was born with an emerald spoon on his mouth, he wants more. He wants to be adored and loved and respected. And he will punish anyone who questions or stands in the way of that. He spreads bigotry and hate, promotes conspiracy theories and shitty politicians, and demeans the average working person and gaslights them. He will have his kingdom and everyone will know it and praise it, even if it's smoldering ashes.

It also goes along with their relative intelligences. Musk doesn't know shit and the businesses that he's bought succeed in spite of himself. He'll chase short term gains and figure out how to handle the consequences later. Zuck provided some technical basis for his product and managed it maliciously, but managed it well. He plays the long game, and he picks what'll make him the most money overall.

None of this is meant to praise nor extol either of them. There's a funny comic panel where the Joker realizes someone he's been working with isn't just cosplaying, but is an actual Nazi. He's disgusted and has an "even evil has standards" moment. So that's who you've got on comparison here -- the Joker who draws the line at Nazis, or Nazis.

The difference is that Zuck built Facebook either from taking an original idea and expanding on it or writing the code himself, he actually knows what he's talking about. Elon is Trump putting his name on everything and calling it his while half-assing physics texts and claiming expertise.

And what would be those "trade secrets"? The ability to make posts and have them being read by other people? I'm pretty sure every forum software since the '70s has prior art. Elons fragile narcissism know no bounds.

And what would be those “trade secrets”?

Hey Musk, your wasted $44 billion didn't buy you the Fedverse and its protocol, dipshit.

who knew that firing all your dev's with no severance would backfire on you.

Sorry, If you ignore all employee protections, and fire people and refuse to pay them what they are owed, you can not really complain about them using those skills elsewhere including things they learned in your company.

While I’m no fan of Facebook/zuck, I would love to see this bullshit play out.

Didn't he fire those people, claim they sucked, claim that Twitter's code sucked, and promise that his new, more hardcore guys would rewrite it all to work better?

This reminds me of something...

What are we going to build?
A PAYWALL!
Who's going to pay for it?
META!

The best people. Just terrific hackers or coders or whatever they're called. Biggly.

Damaged narcissistic minds, misfiring alike on all goddamned cylinders.

It functions on completely different technology, go back to your masturbatiom cave Elon

You mean that Musk doesn't own Fedverse like he's implying??

Trade secrets? Is Threads already delinquent on some vendor payments too?

Not very good trade secrets if Zuck knew them!

Didn't know that Fedverse technology was one of Twitter's trade secrets. LOL.

Next he's going to sue whoever he can because email already exists! And we type! With words! LAWSUIT

And how exactly are they going to alleged that these developers leveraged their trade secrets and knowledge to create threads? Like what's the go here, these devs have an eidetic memory and know exactly what they need to implement a clone?

I know when I've moved between employers, I take my experience which I re-leverage in new projects. Unless I've physically taken code or have access to it, it sounds like this lawyer is talking out his ass?

This is hilarious and I am here for it. They can't pay their bills, can't imagine they have funds to get a legal case together.

Cage fight, Cage Fight, CAGE FIGHT!!!

Do I have to opt out of threads? I have no intention of ever using it but I don’t want it to automatically be created just bc I have a Facebook.

You have to opt in by signing up and importing your account. It uses your IG account, so you don’t have to choose a new name and password, but they don’t automatically set it up.

Facebook will no doubt be creating shadow profiles of every fediverse account it comes across and there's nothing you can do about it.

You don't have to opt out of anything. Threads account won't get automatically created. But delete Instagram anyways. And god forbid if you actually have their app installed.

@faltuuser Definitely time to grab the popcorn for this one. Hopefully Zuck and Elon damage their respective business to no end. If the jurisdiction of any litigation is California, Elon is going to have an uphill battle.

@faltuuser Definitely time to grab the popcorn for this one. Hopefully Zuck and Elon damage their respective business to no end. If the jurisdiction of any litigation is California, Elon is going to have an uphill battle.