Twitter has issued a threat of legal action against Meta Platforms due to its recently launched Threads platform, as reported by the news website Semafor.
According to a letter sent by Twitter’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook (Meta’s parent company), the microblogging giant accuses Meta of hiring former Twitter employees who allegedly possess access to confidential information and trade secrets.
Threads, which was introduced by Meta on Wednesday and has already garnered over 30 million sign-ups, aims to compete with Elon Musk’s Twitter by leveraging the vast user base of Instagram.
In the letter, Spiro expressed Twitter’s intent to vigorously protect its intellectual property rights and demanded that Meta promptly cease the utilization of any trade secrets or highly confidential information belonging to Twitter.
However, Meta’s spokesperson, Andy Stone, refuted the allegations, stating in a Threads post that none of the engineers on the Threads team are former Twitter employees. Stone denied the existence of any such individuals in the team.
Reuters reached out to a former senior Twitter employee who claimed to be unaware of any former staff members working on Threads. They also expressed no knowledge of any senior personnel transitioning to Meta.
In response to the news, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, stated, “Competition is fine, cheating is not,” via a tweet.
