Twitter sent a cease-and-desist letter Thursday to Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, threatening to sue the social media giant over its launch of rival platform Threads.
The letter alleges that Twitter has “serious concerns” that Meta gained access to and abused the company’s trade secrets and intellectual property. The platform also alleged that Meta poached its workforce to build Threads, branded as a Twitter alternative platform.
“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or highly confidential information,” according to the letter.
Threads was marketed by Meta leadership as “our response to Twitter,” as user backlash grows against Twitter owner Elon Musk, who has made numerous changes to platform policies since taking over the site last year.
Most recently, Musk placed limits on how many posts a user could view in a day, encouraging free users to pay for the Twitter Blue service to view more.
Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, who replaced Musk as the top executive last month, downplayed the Threads launch Thursday without naming it directly.
“This is your public square. We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated,” she said.
Meta Communications Director Andy Stone pushed back on the allegations.
“No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing,” he posted on Threads.
Tens of millions of people signed up for Threads on its first day, including at least 30 million by Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. New users link their Instagram accounts to start on the service.
The app has been criticized for missing features, but leadership is optimistic about the platform’s future.
“The real test is not if we can build up a lot of hype, but if you all find enough value in the app to keep using it over time,” Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said.
“And there are tons of basics that are missing: search, hashtags, a following feed” and direct messaging, he said, adding “We’re on it,” but ”it’ll take time.”
Threads will not be available in Europe for now, after European Union officials prevented the app’s launch due to privacy concerns.