Meta responds to Twitter CEO's threat of legal action.

Following threats of legal action from billionaire Elon Musk regarding Threads - Meta's new platform, a company representative affirmed that none of the employees working for the application were formerly Twitter employees.

The Threads app icon on a phone screen. (Source: AFP)

Just hours after Meta launched Threads on July 5th, Twitter threatened to sue Meta – the parent company of social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The Threads app is expected to "outperform" Twitter, which is struggling under the leadership of Elon Musk; and on July 6, Musk's lawyers accused Meta of "stealing Twitter's trade secrets and intellectual property."

Threads has had an impressive start: The app had received 30 million registrations by the morning of July 6th, including from numerous brands, journalists, and celebrities.

Also on the morning of July 6th, Threads was the top-rated free app on Apple's App Store and the most trending topic on rival social media platform Twitter.

According to CNN , the atmosphere on Threads' launch day was like "the first day of school," with a flood of users rushing to try it out and post their first posts.

Many people quickly questioned whether Threads could become a "killer" that would determine Twitter's fate.

Meanwhile, the Independent , citing sources, reported that Twitter's lawyer, Alex Spiro, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, arguing that Meta had "systematically, willfully, and unlawfully appropriated Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property."

“Twitter intends to rigorously enforce its intellectual property rights and requires Meta to take immediate steps to cease using any of Twitter’s trade secrets, or other ‘confidential’ information,” Attorney Spiro wrote in the letter.

“Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil and emergency remedies without further notice to prevent Meta from retaining, disclosing, or using its intellectual property,” Spiro added.

Attorney Spiro alleges that Meta hired dozens of former Twitter employees who “have had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”

Mr. Spiro stated that Meta's "Threads clone" application was built with the "specific purpose" of using "Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property to accelerate the development of Meta's competing application."

The lawyer argued that this "violates both state and federal law, as well as the current obligations of those employees to Twitter."

Andy Stone, Director of Communications at Meta, responded to these claims on July 7th, stating that Threads' technical team does not include any former Twitter employees.

"To be clear: None of Threads' engineers are former Twitter employees—that simply isn't the case," Stone wrote on Threads.

Meanwhile, according to the Independent , Musk responded to Twitter's threat of legal action against Meta by saying, "Competition is good, cheating is not."

Source: https://baoquocte.vn/meta-phan-hoi-truoc-loi-de-doa-kien-tung-cua-ong-chu-twitter-233820.html