Twitter accuses Meta of stealing trade secrets for its new Threads app

Twitter lawyer A letter For parents on Facebook meta On Wednesday, the company was accused of “systematic” and “unlawful” misappropriation of trade secrets following the launch of its threading service.

The letter from Elon Musk’s longtime attorney Alex Spiro alleged that the new Twitter Meta clone was created by former Twitter employees who were “intentionally hired” to develop a “spoof” app. Semaphore was the first to report the message.

Spiro did provide concrete examples of Twitter employees using trade secrets to build the app, which has been a success Millions of users within hours of its release. But the letter — sent the same day the threads opened to the public — shows Musk’s level of interest given Meta’s user base and technical capabilities.

“No one on the Thread engineering team is an ex-Twitter employee,” Andy Stone, Meta Communications Director, posted on Thread. “This is nothing.”

Since Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, the site has faced challenges, including some advertisers suspending their campaigns. Musk has drastically downsized the company, making it slow to respond to glitches.

Spiro said Meta is “expressly prohibited” from crawling or scraping Twitter followers’ data, without providing evidence that Meta has engaged in such activity. Musk has previously alleged that the scraping of Twitter user data occurred on a massive scale, though he, too, neglected to show specific examples.

On Thursday, Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Iaccarino, tweeted that the company is “often imitated,” an apparent reference to threads.

The themes have already been launched with representation from major brands and celebrities. The app still lacks some important features, including the web app, and hasn’t made any money yet.

He watches: The speed of growth of the threads was absolutely amazing