‘Competition is fine, cheating is not’: Musk reacts to Threads

Twitter has threatened to sue Meta for their new app Threads shortly after its launch, according to a news outlet.

Twitter’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, accused Meta of utilizing Twitter’s trade secrets by hiring many former employees from the Bluebird app in a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In response to the news, Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, stated on Friday that he is in favour of competition but strongly opposes any form of cheating.

Musk responded to a news article on Twitter with a statement: “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”

Take a look:

NEWS: Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over “systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation” of Twitter’s trade secrets and IP, as well as scraping of Twitter’s data, in a cease-and-desist letter sent yesterday to Zuckerberg by Elon’s lawyer Alex Spiro. pic.twitter.com/enWhnlYcAt

— T(w)itter Daily News  (@TitterDaily) July 6, 2023

In the letter, Spiro, who serves as both Musk’s personal lawyer and Twitter’s lawyer, accuses Meta of deliberately and unlawfully misusing Twitter’s trade secrets and intellectual property to create Threads.

Twitter asserts that their former employees retained access to confidential information, which was exploited to develop a “copycat” app, thus violating both state and federal laws.

“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,” Spiro wrote in the letter.

He further stated that it serves as a “formal notice” for Meta to retain all documents that could be pertinent in a potential legal conflict between the two companies.

In a Threads post, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone stated that the engineering team of Threads does not include any former Twitter employees.

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted, suggesting Threads, “We’re often imitated, but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.”

The lawsuit is a strong indication that Musk sees Zuckerberg’s “Twitter Killer” app as a genuine threat.

Threads, aiming to compete with Twitter using Instagram’s vast user base, attracted over 30 million sign-ups within 18 hours of its launch.

This popularity comes as people seek alternatives to Twitter due to Musk’s controversial handling of the platform since acquiring it for $44 billion.

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