Twitter has threatened to sue Meta over its new rival app, Threads, which launched only a day ago, according to reports.
News website Semafor reported on Thursday that a letter was sent to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta, by a lawyer for Twitter, Alex Spiro.
Meta launched Threads on Wednesday and has already logged more than 30 million sign-ups. It is looking to take on Elon Musk’s Twitter by taking advantage of Instagram’s billions of users.
The letter accused Mr Zuckerberg of the “systematic, willful (sic), and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property”.
“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,” Mr Spiro reportedly wrote in the letter.
“Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice.”
The letter also accused Meta of hiring former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”
In a tweet referencing the letter on Thursday evening, Mr Musk said: “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
In response Meta spokesperson Andy Stone wrote on Threads: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”
Twitter had 229 million monthly active users in May 2022, according to a statement made before Mr Musk’s buyout.
But since his takeover of the social media platform, Twitter has seen competition from Mastodon and Bluesky among others.
Threads’ user interface has a striking resemblance to Twitter’s platform but Threads does not support keyword searches or direct messages.
Dubbed as the “Twitter-Killer”, Threads was the top free app on Apple’s App Store in the UK and the US on Thursday.
Its arrival comes after Mr Zuckerberg and Mr Musk have traded barbs for months, even threatening to fight each other in a real-life mixed martial arts cage match in Las Vegas.
“The cage match has started, and Zuckerberg delivered a major blow,” Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg told Reuters.
“In many ways, it’s exactly what you’d expect from Meta: Stellar execution and an easy-to-navigate user interface.”
While Threads is a standalone app, users can log in using their Instagram details, which makes it a smooth transition for Instagram’s more than two billion monthly active users.
“There should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will,” Mr Zuckerberg said on Threads, where he now has a million followers.
The app does not have hashtags and keyword search functions, which means users cannot follow real-time events like on Twitter. It also does not yet have a direct messaging function or desktop version.
There are no ads on the Threads app and Mr Zuckerberg said the company would only think about monetisation once there was a clear path to one billion users.
Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, who was hired by Mr Musk in May to shore up advertiser confidence, said in tweet on Thursday that “everyone’s voice matters” on the app.
“We’re often imitated - but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.”
The Standard has attempted to contact Twitter, but without success.
