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Twitter threatens lawsuit against Meta as rival Threads takes off

  • Facebook owner’s new platform has already logged over 30 million sign ups, as it takes advantage of Instagram’s billions of users
  • A lawyer’s letter to Mark Zuckerberg accuses Meta of hiring former Twitter employees who ‘continue to have access’ to the company’s trade secrets

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Twitter threatens legal action against Meta as rival Threads app goes live

Twitter threatens legal action against Meta as rival Threads app goes live
Twitter threatened to sue Meta just hours after the Instagram parent company launched Threads, an app it hopes will beat out the struggling site owned by Elon Musk.

In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, published by online news outlet Semafor on Thursday, Musk lawyer Alex Spiro accused the company of “unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property”.

The letter accused 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”.

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Threads is the biggest challenger yet to Musk-owned Twitter, which has seen a series of potential competitors emerge but not yet replace one of the world’s biggest social media platforms, despite its struggles.

Zuckerberg’s latest move against Musk further heightened the rivalry between the two multibillionaires who have even agreed to meet for hand to hand combat in a cage match.

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Threads went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries on Wednesday, and early feedback noted its close, but scaled back, resemblance to Twitter.

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