NEW YORK (AP) — Twitter has threatened authorized motion towards Meta over its new text-based app referred to as Threads, which has drawn tens of hundreds of thousands of customers since launching this week as a rival to Elon Musk’s social media platform.
In a letter Wednesday to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alex Spiro, an lawyer representing Twitter, accused Meta of unlawfully utilizing Twitter’s commerce secrets and techniques and different mental property by hiring former Twitter workers to create a “copycat” app.
The transfer ramps up the tensions between the social media giants after Threads debuted Wednesday, concentrating on those that are looking for out alternate options to Twitter amid unpopular adjustments Musk has made to the platform since shopping for it final 12 months for $44 billion.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone wrote Thursday on Threads: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”
In the letter, which information web site Semafor first reported Thursday, Spiro mentioned Twitter “intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights” and famous the corporate’s proper to hunt civil cures or a court docket injunction.
He mentioned the letter marked a “formal notice” for Meta to protect paperwork related for a possible dispute between the businesses.
SEE ALSO: Zuckerberg’s Twitter rival Threads enlists hundreds of thousands, challenges Musk’s grip on microblogging media
In a reply to a tweet about the opportunity of authorized motion towards Meta, Musk wrote: “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
The Associated Press reached out to Spiro on Thursday for additional info. Twitter responded to an electronic mail looking for remark with a crude automated reply, its normal response to journalists.
New Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino has not publicly commented on the letter however appeared to handle Threads’ launch.
“We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated,” Yaccarino tweeted.
Some analysts say Meta’s new providing, billed as a text-based model of the photo-sharing app Instagram, could possibly be a major headache for Twitter — pointing to the joy surrounding Threads’ launch and spectacular obtain numbers thus far.
But success isn’t assured. Industry watchers level to Meta’s monitor file of beginning standalone apps that had been later shut down and word that Threads remains to be in its early days.
Besides some glitches and gripes about lacking options, Meta’s new app additionally has raised information privateness issues. While Threads launched in additional than 100 international locations, it’s notably unavailable within the European Union, which has strict information privateness guidelines.
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