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Twitter’s Elon Musk Considers Suing Meta, Zuckerberg Over Threads
Twitter is contemplating suing Facebook (formerly known as Meta) over Threads, a recently established Twitter clone.. Elon Musk said in a tweet: “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
According to CBS News, only one day after its formal launch, Mark Zuckerberg's Twitter clone Threads is facing a potential legal fight – from Elon Musk, who is known for his disregard for the legal system. Threads, according to Twitter's legal team, is a “copycat” software that was created by hiring former Twitter workers and stealing the company's trade secrets.
Threads, which began this week, has already gotten a lot of attention, with 30 million new users coming up within the first few hours. The site is similar to Twitter in that users may like or repost messages. It does, however, interface with Instagram, allowing users to follow their current Instagram user base.
“No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing,” according to Andy Stone, Facebook’s communications director, responding to allegations. Despite this, Twitter’s legal team remains adamant, stating that Facebook hired “dozens of former Twitter employees” who had access to Musk’s “trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”
Elon Musk has also put his two cents into the issue. “Competition is fine, cheating is not,” Musk tweeted, voicing out his disapproval of Meta’s new platform. This comes at a time when Musk's leadership at Twitter is being questioned, with users expressing discontent with recent changes, such as a restriction on the amount of tweets users may access each day, and conservatives feeling that censorship is returning to pre-Musk levels.
Threads was constructed in months, according to Twitter's attorney, Alex Spiro, by exploiting the experience of ex-Twitter employees.“Twitter has serious concerns that Meta Platforms has engaged in systemic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property,” Spiro wrote. He further added that Twitter plans to “strictly enforce its intellectual property rights.”
It should be recalled that Musk sacked a large number of Twitter workers without cause during his tenure at the firm, accusing them of performing very little work. He now appears to be concerned that after leaving Twitter, they went to Facebook and formed a strong rival to their old firm.
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