Within the run-up to Instagram launching Threads earlier this week – its “civil”, text-based different to Twitter – billionaire Elon Musk has criticised the rival app trying to compete with the platform he purchased again in October for $44bn by calling out the quantity of knowledge it could gather on customers.
Now, after the Meta-run platform is out within the wild, Musk seems to be so riled up by its runaway success (Fb co-founder Mark Zuckerberg reported 10 million sign-ups within the first seven hours after launch) that he’s threatening to sue Meta over what he considers “dishonest”.
Information web site Semafor shared a letter from Twitter lawyer Alex Spiro, wherein he writes that the chicken app has “critical considerations” Zuckerberg’s firm has carried out “systemic, wilful, and illegal misappropriation of Twitter’s commerce secrets and techniques and different mental property”.
It reads: “Over the previous yr, Meta has employed dozens of former Twitter workers. Twitter is aware of that these workers beforehand labored at Twitter; that these workers had and proceed to have entry to Twitter’s commerce secrets and techniques and different extremely confidential data; that these workers owe ongoing obligations to Twitter; and that many of those workers have improperly retained Twitter paperwork and digital gadgets.
“With that information, Meta intentionally assigned these workers to develop, in a matter of months, Meta’s copycat ‘Threads’ app with the particular intent that they use Twitter’s commerce secrets and techniques and different mental property with a view to speed up the event of Meta’s competing app, in violation of each state and federal regulation in addition to these workers’ ongoing obligations to Twitter.
“Twitter intends to strictly implement its mental property rights, and calls for that Meta take fast steps to cease utilizing any Twitter commerce secrets and techniques or different extremely confidential data.”
In the meantime, Meta’s communication director, Andy Stone has taken to Threads to state: “Nobody on the Threads engineering crew is a former Twitter worker – that’s simply not a factor.”
The Musk-Zuckerberg feud very a lot continues, although, to the extent there are continued rumours the 2 tech moguls might partake in a “cage struggle” to settle their variations – sure, actually.
