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

Twitter’s lawyer wrote a letter to Facebook mum or dad Meta on Wednesday, accusing the corporate of “systematic” and “unlawful misappropriation” of commerce secrets and techniques following the launch of its Threads service.

The letter from longtime Elon Musk lawyer Alex Spiro alleged that Meta’s new Twitter clone was constructed by former Twitter staff “deliberately assigned” to develop a “copycat” app. Semafor was first to report on the letter.

Spiro provided no concrete examples of Twitter staff utilizing commerce secrets and techniques to construct the app, which notched tens of millions of customers inside hours of its launch. But the message — despatched on similar day that Threads opened to the general public — exhibits Musk’s stage of concern given Meta’s userbase and technical capacities.

“No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee,” Andy Stone, Meta communications director, posted on Threads. “That’s just not a thing.”

Since Musk’s $44 billion buy of Twitter in October, the positioning has been riddled with challenges, together with some advertisers suspending their campaigns. Musk has dramatically downsized the corporate, leaving it sluggish to reply to glitches.

Spiro mentioned Meta is “expressly prohibited” from crawling or scraping Twitter’s follower information, with out offering proof that Meta has engaged in that exercise. Musk beforehand alleged that scraping of Twitter person information occurred on a big scale, although he, too, uncared for of present particular examples.

On Thursday, Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted that the corporate was “often imitated,” a transparent reference to Threads.

Threads has already launched with illustration from main manufacturers and celebrities. The app nonetheless lacks some essential options, together with an online app, and is not but producing income.

WATCH: Threads’ velocity of progress has been completely breathtaking