Leader Government Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and proprietor of Twitter, Elon Musk attends the Viva Era convention devoted to innovation and startups on the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre on June 16, 2023 in Paris, France.
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Twitter’s attorney wrote a letter to Fb mum or dad Meta on Wednesday, accusing the corporate of “systematic” and “illegal misappropriation” of business secrets and techniques following the release of its Threads provider.
The letter from longtime Elon Musk lawyer Alex Spiro alleged that Meta’s new Twitter clone was once constructed via former Twitter staff “intentionally assigned” to broaden a “copycat” app. Semafor was once first to document at the letter.
Spiro presented no concrete examples of Twitter staff the use of business secrets and techniques to construct the app, which notched thousands and thousands of customers inside hours of its release. However the message — despatched on identical day that Threads opened to the general public — presentations Musk’s stage of shock given Meta’s userbase and technical capacities.
“Nobody at the Threads engineering group is a former Twitter worker,” Andy Stone, Meta communications director, posted on Threads. “That is simply now not a factor.”
Since Musk’s $44 billion acquire of Twitter in October, the web site has been riddled with demanding situations, together with some advertisers postponing their campaigns. Musk has dramatically downsized the corporate, leaving it gradual to answer system defects.
Spiro mentioned Meta is “expressly prohibited” from crawling or scraping Twitter’s follower knowledge, with out offering proof that Meta has engaged in that job. Musk prior to now alleged that scraping of Twitter person knowledge befell on a big scale, although he, too, not noted of display particular examples.
On Thursday, Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted that the corporate was once “ceaselessly imitated,” a transparent connection with Threads.
Threads has already introduced with illustration from main manufacturers and celebrities. The app nonetheless lacks some vital options, together with a internet app, and is not but producing earnings.
WATCH: Threads’ pace of enlargement has been completely breathtaking
