After launching yesterday, Threads has become the fastest growing social media app ever netting over 10 million new users on day one and reaching over 70 million members since. It also appears to be one of Meta’s fastest apps to be threatened with a possible lawsuit.
Twitter has already sent Meta a sternly written cease and desist letter stating the new app harvested tech and former Twitter employees to build up the Instagram companion. The two companies have been feuding for quite some time now and continue to butt heads. Elon Musk tweeted that Threads goes beyond competition into the realm of “cheating”.
The letter reported by ABC News says:
“Over the past year, Meta has hired dozens of former Twitter employees. Twitter knows that these employees previously worked at Twitter; that these employees had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information; that these employees owe ongoing obligations to Twitter; and that many of these employees have improperly retained Twitter documents and electronic devices.”
“With that knowledge, Meta deliberately assigned these employees to develop, in a matter of months, Meta’s copycat ‘Threads’ app with the specific intent that they use Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property in order to accelerate the development of Meta’s competing app, in violation of both state and federal law as well as those employees’ ongoing obligations to Twitter.”
While the letter is not more than an official request for Meta to shut down the Threads app, it does go on to outline Twitter’s demands and vows to pursue the matter.
In response, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone posted on Threads saying, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee – that’s just not a thing.”
You can read the full letter sent by Twitter’s legal representative Alex Spirio here.