Twitter to take legal action against Meta over Threads app

Twitter is expressing its discontent with Meta’s Threads app, a text-based Instagram counterpart, as it reportedly warns Meta of potential legal consequences. Twitter alleges that Meta has unlawfully acquired former employees and misused confidential information and intellectual property.

“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights and requires Meta to take immediate action to stop using Twitter’s trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Alex Spiro, Elon Musk’s personal attorney, wrote in a letter to Meta. “Twitter reserves all rights, including but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without notice to prevent the retention, disclosure or use of Meta’s intellectual property.”

Spiro, who is acting on behalf of Twitter’s parent company X Corp, claims that Meta has hired dozens of former Twitter employees over the past year. He claimed that the company “directed” them to work on Threads “with the specific purpose of using Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property to accelerate the development of Meta’s competing app.” He argued that this violates state and federal laws and the obligations these employees have to their former employer. In addition, Spiro said Meta is not allowed to capture Twitter data related to following people.

ReturnByte has reached out to Meta for comment. The company told Semafor that Spiro’s claims were unfounded and that no member of the Threads design team was a former Twitter employee.

For now, Threads users must log into the app with their Instagram profile. It’s an easy process that helped Meta quickly sign up tens of millions of users. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 30 million people had joined Threads by Thursday morning, just over 12 hours after the app was released.