Elon Musk threatens to sue Mark Zuckerberg's Meta after launching its Twitter copycat app, Threads.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, debuted Threads, a new social network that relies on Instagram's infrastructure and users. However, it works a lot like Twitter, a primarily text-based service.
Elon Musk Threatens to Sue Threads Parent Meta
SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends an event during the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, on June 16, 2023.
The Tesla and SpaceX big boss has declared war on Meta, formerly known as Facebook. According to Variety, the billionaire owner of Twitter, Musk, took a swipe at Meta's Threads. He blurted out, "Competition is fine; cheating is not."
The outspoken entrepreneur, who also leads Tesla and SpaceX, bought Twitter last October 2022 for a whopping $44 billion deal. But besides his mere tweet, BBC reports that Musk, who has never been one to shy away from controversy, has taken things to court.
Twitter attorney Alex Spiro sent a cease-and-disease letter to Meta Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Zuckerberg. It accuses Meta of engaging in systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property."
And with that, the letter stresses that "Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information."
The letter claims that Meta hired "dozens of Twitter employees" last year. It also alleges that "Meta deliberately assigned these employees to develop, in a matter of months, Meta's copycat 'Threads' app." Twitter's lawyers also claim that this was done to use Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property to advance the app that the Facebook parent was working on, which turns out to be a Twitter competitor.
On the other hand, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told The Variety that "no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee."
Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, who succeeded Musk, also tweeted amid the debut of their new competitor. The former NBC Universal exec says, "[We are] often imitated - but the Twitter community can never be duplicated."
Mark Zuckerberg's First-Ever Tweet After 11 Years
(COMBO/FILES) This combination of file photographs created on June 22, 2023 shows SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk during his visit at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2023 (R) and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg testifying before the House Financial Services Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC on October 23, 2019.
As per a report by Futurism, the Facebook and Instagram big boss, Zuckerberg, logged onto his Twitter account after roughly 11 years of hiatus. His much-awaited comeback was in time for the Threads' launch, wherein he uploaded a viral meme of two identical Spider-Men pointing at each other.
— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) July 6, 2023
Whether Musk will follow through on his threat to sue Meta remains to be seen. However, the legal battle could have significant implications for the future of social media.
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