Twitter threatens legal action against Meta’s Threads

Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta over its new text-based app called Threads, which has drawn tens of millions of users since launching this week as a rival to Elon Musk’s social media platform
In a letter Wednesday to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alex Spiro, an attorney representing Twitter, accused Meta of unlawfully using Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a “copycat” app.
The move ramps up the tensions between the social media giants after Threads debuted Wednesday, targeting those who are seeking out alternatives to Twitter amid unpopular changes Musk has made to the platform since buying it last year for $44 billion.
In a reply to a tweet about the possibility of legal action against Meta, Musk wrote: “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
Some analysts say Meta’s new offering, billed as a text-based version of the photo-sharing app Instagram, could be a significant headache for Twitter — pointing to the excitement surrounding Threads’ launch and impressive download numbers so far. But success isn’t guaranteed. Industry watchers point to Meta’s track record of starting standalone apps that were later shut down and note that Threads is still in its early days.
Besides some glitches and gripes about missing features, Meta’s new app also has raised data privacy concerns. While Threads launched in more than 100 countries, it is notably unavailable in the European Union, which has strict data privacy rules.