SpaceX and Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and start-ups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, June 16, 2023.
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Lawyers for Twitter wrote a letter Send to Facebook Parents Yuan On Wednesday, the company accused the company of “systematic” and “unlawful misappropriation” of trade secrets after launching the Threads service.
Elon Musk’s longtime lawyer, Alex Spiro, claims in a letter that Meta’s new Twitter clone was “deliberately assigned” by an ex-Twitter employee to develop a “copycat” app program built. Semafor first reported the letter.
Spiro did not provide specific examples of Twitter employees using trade secrets to build the app, which millions of users within hours of posting. But the message (sent on the same day Threads opened to the public) shows just how concerned Musk is about Meta’s user base and technical capabilities.
Since Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October, the site has faced challenges, including some advertisers pausing ad campaigns. Musk drastically downsized the company, making it slow to respond to failures.
Spiro said Meta was “expressly prohibited” from scraping or scraping Twitter follower data without providing evidence of Meta’s involvement in the campaign. Musk previously claimed that Twitter user data was stolen on a large scale, but he also ignored specific examples.
On Thursday, Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, tweeted that the company was “often parodied,” an apparent reference to Threads.
Threads has launched and is represented by major brands and celebrities. The app still lacks some key features, including web apps, and has yet to generate revenue.
watch: The growth rate of threads is absolutely amazing
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