Elon Musk Accuses Meta of ‘Cheating’ With Twitter Rival Threads

Twitter owner Elon Musk has accused Meta of “cheating” with the launch of rival social network Threads.

Twitter threatened to sue Meta over “systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation” of Twitter’s trade secrets and intellectual property, as well as scraping of Twitter’s data, in a cease-and-desist letter sent to Mark Zuckerberg by Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro. The letter was first reported by Semafor.

In the legal letter, Spiro claimed ex-Twitter staff helped create the “copycat” Threads app. In an interview with the BBC in April, Musk said Twitter had laid off more than 6,000 employees, around 80% of its workforce, following his $44 billion purchase of the company. “Competition is fine, cheating is not,” Musk said in a tweet. Meta has denied the claims.

Threads, which launched this week and already has more than 30 million users, is pitched as a “friendly” alternative to Twitter. Twitter currently has an estimated 350 million users.

Twitter’s letter is a legal threat only, and it has yet to file a lawsuit. According to the BBC, for Twitter to be successful in any legal claim, it would have to prove its own intellectual property, such as programming code, was taken and used without permission.

In the letter, Spiro accuses Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information”.

“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 says.

“Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice.”

On Threads, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee – that’s just not a thing”.

With a new social media app for people to join, the internet has been vocal about how they feel about Meta’s new internet endeavor. The launch of Threads also sparked Zuckerberg’s first tweet in 11 years.

Image credit: Bloomberg / Getty Images
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.